by J. Biggs and C. Tang, Maidenhead, England,
Open University Press, 2007, 360 pp., £29.99, ISBN-13: 978-0-335-22126-4

Teaching for quality learning at university

Technological advances are bringing connected and autonomous vehicles (CAVs) to the ever- evolving transportation system. Anticipating the public acceptance and adoption of these technologies is important. A recent internet-based survey was conducted polling 347 Austinites to understand their opinions on smart-car technologies and strategies. Ordered-probit and other model results indicate that respondents perceive fewer crashes to be the primary benefit of autonomous vehicles (AVs), with equipment failure being their top concern. Their average willingness to pay (WTP) for adding full (Level 4) automation ($7,253) appears to be much higher than that for adding partial (Level 3) automation ($3,300) to their current vehicles. This study estimates the impact of demographics, built-environment variables, and travel characteristics on Austinites’ WTP for adding such automations and connectivity to their current and coming vehicles. It also estimates adoption rates of shared autonomous vehicles (SAVs) under different pricing scenarios ($1, $2, and $3 per mile), choice dependence on friends’ and neighbors’ adoption rates, and home-location decisions after AVs and SAVs become a common mode of transport. Higher-income, technology-savvy males, living in urban areas, and those who have experienced more crashes have a greater interest in and higher WTP for the new technologies, with less dependence on others’ adoption rates. Such behavioral models are useful to simulate long-term adoption of CAV technologies under different vehicle pricing and demographic scenarios. These results can be used to develop smarter transportation systems for more efficient and sustainable travel.

Assessing Public Opinions of and Interest in New Vehicle Technologies: An Austin Perspective

https://researchrepository.ucd.ie/bitstream/10197/12102/2/Survey_on_Smart_Contracts____JNCA__2nd_Revision_CleanDocument%20%282%29.pdf

Survey on blockchain based smart contracts: Applications, opportunities and challenges

The Blockchain is the newest and perspective technology in modern economy. This technology can help to solve different kind of problems in the industrial sphere, such as trust, transparency, security and reliability of data processing. In theory, the use of Blockchain technology shows great and positive results, but what can say about practice? In this paper the description of the Blockchain technology, and it advantages and disadvantages are analyzed. Many already implemented applications of Blockchain technology were studied, as well as affected success or problems factors during the implementations. This paper aim is to analyze conveniences and difficulties, related to the Blockchain integration and implementation in the different fields of modern industry.

The Advantages and Disadvantages of the Blockchain Technology

In the past few years, the implementation of blockchain technology for various applications has been widely discussed in the research community and the industry. There are sufficient number of articles that discuss the possibility of applying blockchain technology in various areas, such as, healthcare, IoT, and business. However, in this article, we present a comparative analysis of core blockchain architecture, its fundamental concepts, and its applications in three major areas: the Internet-of-Things (IoT), healthcare, business and vehicular industry. For each area, we discuss in detail, challenges and solutions that have been proposed from the research community and industry. This research studies also presented the complete ecosystem of blockchain of all the papers we reviewed and summarized. Moreover, analysis is performed of various blockchain platforms, their consensus models, and applications. Finally, we discuss key aspects that are required for the widespread future adoption of blockchain technology in these major areas.

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A Comparative Analysis of Blockchain Architecture and its Applications: Problems and Recommendations

Blockchain is a fast-disruptive technology becoming a key instrument in share economy. In recent years, Blockchain has received considerable attention from many researchers and government institutions. This paper aims to present the Blockchain and smart contract for a specific domain which is real estate. A detailed design of smart contract is presented and then a use case for renting residential and business buildings is examined.

/pdf/design-of-the-blockchain-smart-contract-a-use-case-for-real-c963wu0gu9.pdf

Design of the Blockchain Smart Contract: A Use Case for Real Estate

The emergence of blockchain technology has created a frenzy and a mind shift for organizations and industries. Governments and international bodies are increasingly discussing the potential implications of blockchain's distributed ledgers on business, governments and the economy. The intended purpose of the blockchain technology is to connect business network members in a decentralized way. The technology enables exchange and sharing of information without the involvement of intermediaries acting as arbitrators. Powered by its decentralized nature, the network will not have any single point of failure and will not rely on any single entity. Hence, blockchain eliminates the risks of centralization. This paper discusses a scenario of a blockchain technology in distributed ledgers to manage a well function and secure supply chain.

Blockchain in Supply Chain Trading

The Government of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) is moving towards the Smart City and integrating Blockchain (BC) technology among its services to the public. In April 2018, the UAE government launched a Blockchain Strategy of 2021. Under this initiative, 50 percent of government transactions will be processed over a BC platform. Eleven billion dirhams are expected to be saved in transactions and documents prepared in the government sector. The UAE 2021 strategy includes four pillars, focusing on residence happiness, government efficiency, advanced legislation, and global entrepreneurship. In October 2016, the emirate of Dubai, launched a local BC strategy to become the first energy-powered city that leads the future economy by 2020. This motivation placed the Government of UAE as a unique and pioneered country in innovation and enabling the ecosystem to be addressed in both the public and private sectors. This strategy is based on three domains: government effectiveness, industry innovation, and international, domestic leadership. BC projects will be experimenting throughout the country in many sectors such as energy, transportation, logistics, tourism, health, education and employment, economic development, safety and justice, social services, municipal and land works. This paper study the state of art of the UAE strategy towards adopting BC technology among all its entities. A survey has been conducted to evaluate the strategic effectiveness of this new technology. The study involves a combination of 71 public and private companies that operate in the UAE. The outcome shows that there is a need to integrate this technology. At the same time, the survey concluded that 92.0% of the companies are aware of the technology. It also highlighted that 55% of companies suffer from the lack of experienced consultants and outsources their services. The survey confirmed that BC technology had been used in different industrial use cases such as supply chain (35%), Internet of things (27%), and financial transactions (25%).

State of Art of the Effectiveness in Adopting Blockchain Technology - UAE Survey Study

A blockchain is a distributed ledger and the underlying technology of the Bitcoin cryptocurrency, allowing it to operate in a decentralized fashion with no intermediaries such as financial institutions. The use of blockchain, however, will be far beyond the financial sector; smart contracts, for example would allow business and legal agreements to be stored and executed online. It is anticipated that blockchain will do to middle- and back-office functions what the Internet and the Web have done to the front-office – automate functions. In this paper, we investigate what Chief Information Officers (CIOs) think of blockchain and how they plan to utilize it for their organizations. We conducted a survey that was completed by 25 CIOs in the United Arab Emirates and found mixed feelings about the technology and barriers for use. In this paper, we also discuss opportunities and challenges in adopting blockchain.

Blockchain for UAE Organizations: Insights from CIOs with Opportunities and Challenges

Smart Cities have been facing a lot of security breach issues, there are many risks that have high impacts on its sustainability. Penetration testing is an essential assessment and needs to be performed frequently for Smart Cities systems to maintain their safety and security. Due to the rapid growth of modern cities, there is an exigent need to identify the various security risks and threats that exists in these cities. This study proposes a practical and efficient solution to mitigate these risks by evaluating a smart solution in performing penetration testing on those smart cities via using a Raspberry Pi III-computer based smart device as an alternative method to perform penetration testing. Raspberry Pi III is a portable device which has a self-contained miniaturized computer that can be used to perform some tasks such as penetration and vulnerability assessments to identify and scan the networks by using some build-in pentesting tools. This research paper discussed the benefits of using such smart device in performing penetration testing and vulnerability assessments.

Nedaa Baker Al Barghuthi

Papers

Design of the Blockchain Smart Contract: A Use Case for Real Estate

Blockchain in Supply Chain Trading

State of Art of the Effectiveness in Adopting Blockchain Technology - UAE Survey Study

Blockchain for UAE Organizations: Insights from CIOs with Opportunities and Challenges

Evaluation of portable penetration testing on smart cities applications using Raspberry Pi III