A Distributed Secure Mechanism for Resource Protection in a Digital Ecosystem Environment

The dynamic interaction and collaboration of the loosely coupled entities play a pivotal role for the successful implementation of a Digital Ecosystem environment. However, such interaction and collaboration can only be promoted when information and resources are effortlessly shared, accessed, and utilized by the interacting entities. A major requirement to promote an intensive sharing of resources is the ability to secure and uphold the confidentiality, integrity and non-repudiation of resources. This requirement is extremely important in particular when interactions with the unfamiliar entities occur frequently. In this paper, we present a distributed mechanism for improving resource protection in a Digital Ecosystem environment. This mechanism can be used not only for any secure and reliable transaction, but also for encouraging the collaborative efforts by the Digital Ecosystem community members to play a major role in securing the environment. Public Key Infrastructure is also employed to provide a strong protection for its access workflows.

A critical literature review of security and privacy in smart home healthcare schemes adopting IoT&blockchain:Problems,challenges and solutions

Protecting private data in smart homes,a popular Internet-of-Things(IoT)application,remains a significant data security and privacy challenge due to the large-scale development and distributed nature of IoT networks.Recently,smart healthcare has leveraged smart home systems,thereby compounding security concerns in terms of the confidentiality of sensitive and private data and by extension the privacy of the data owner.However,proof-of-authority(PoA)-based blockchain distributed ledger technology(DLT)has emerged as a promising solution for protecting private data from indiscriminate use and thereby preserving the privacy of individuals residing in IoT-enabled smart homes.This review elicits some concerns,issues,and problems that have hindered the adoption of blockchain and IoT(BCoT)in some domains and suggests requisite solutions using the aging-in-place scenario.Implementation issues with BCoT were examined as well as the combined challenges BCoT can pose when utilised for security gains.The study discusses recent findings,opportunities,and barriers,and provides recommendations that could facilitate the continuous growth of blockchain applications in healthcare.Lastly,the study explored the potential of using a PoA-based permission blockchain with an applicable consent-based privacy model for decision-making in the information disclosure process,including the use of publisher-subscriber contracts for fine-grained access control to ensure secure data processing and sharing,as well as ethical trust in personal information disclosure,as a solution direction.The proposed authorisation framework could guarantee data ownership,conditional access management,scalable and tamper-proof data storage,and a more resilient system against threat models such as interception and insider attacks.

Fundamental aspects of access control for geospatial data

In recent years,geographical information systems have been employed in a wide variety of application domains,and as a result many research efforts are being devoted to those upcoming problems.Geospatial data security,especially access control,has attracted increased research interests within the academic community.The tendency towards sharing and interoperability of geospatial data and applications makes it common to acquire and integrate geospatial data from multiple organisations to accomplish a complex task.Meanwhile,many organisations have the requirement for securing access to possessed sensitive or proprietary geospatial data.In this heterogeneous and distributed environment,consistent access control functionality is crucial to promote controlled accessibility.As an extension of general access control mechanisms in the IT domain,the mechanism for geospatial data access control has its own requirements and characteristics of granularity and geospatial logic.In this paper,we address several fundamental aspects concerning the design and implementation of an access control system for geospatial data,including the classification,requirements,authorisation models,storage structures and management approaches for authorisation rules,matching and decision-making algorithms between authorisation rules and access requests,and its policy enforcement mechanisms.This paper also presents a system framework for realising access control functionality for geospatial data,and explain access control procedures in detail.

Is colonial heritage negative or not so much?Debating heritage discourses and selective interpretation of Kulangsu,China

Heritage is in essence dissonant,especially colonial heritage in postcolonial nations.Via questionnaire surveys and inter‑views,this study investigates Kulangsu in Xiamen,China,a colonial heritage site mainly developed in the 19th and 20th centuries,to unveil the local government’s authorised heritage discourse(AHD)of the site and how tourists perceive the colonial past of Kulangsu and construct their own heritage discourse(s).Results show that,when considering the colonial history of the site,neither the AHD promoted by the authorities nor the tourists’lay discourses are necessarily negative.However,tension implicitly arises between the tourists’demand for comprehensive heritage information and the authorities’selective interpretation of the site.Although the AHD afects lay discourses to some extent,most tourists expect the authorities to present more complete and neutral information about heritage so they can refect and forge their own conception of colonial legacies.From a critical heritage studies perspective,this tension refects the power imbalance between the authorities and the tourists and reminds the authorities and heritage experts to rethink heritage tourism and conservation in terms of heritage interpretation.This paper,therefore,calls for additional refection on the legitimacy of selective interpretation,which implicates a complex process of intricate reasoning that is underpinned by the power imbalance between the authorities and the tourists,ultimately resulting in an AHD.

Echo from the underground: the heritage customization of subway infrastructures in Shanghai’s listed areas

The design of metro stations constitutes a clear example of the new core role of culture in a city such as Shanghai that remains to be assessed from a critical heritage perspective.As an unexplored dimension of a massive heritage institutional apparatus,metro stations act as‘white canvases’where commercial,political and cultural messages are displayed.These messages contribute to city branding while simultaneously influencing the perception and interpretation of the historic urban landscape above ground.This research offers insights into the subway stations located in the listed heritage areas of Shanghai and the architectural,artistic and exhibitive resources that‘give character’to these stations.The research applies visual methods and discursive analysis based on direct observation of these‘characteristic’elements in metro stations.The paper establishes the argument that the amount and distribution of these characteristic elements in the metro network offers unequal representation of the importance of the heritage areas above.When represented,we argue that such features convey renewed narratives of urban identity according to an authorised heritage discourse in Shanghai.These narratives cater to an image of ideal,harmonious continuity between the past and the future that aims to characterise Shanghai as a Chinese global metropolis.