Shabir Ahmad

Bio: Shabir Ahmad is an academic researcher from Jeju National University. The author has contributed to research in topics: Computer science & The Internet. The author has an hindex of 14, co-authored 42 publications receiving 481 citations. Previous affiliations of Shabir Ahmad include University of Engineering and Technology, Lahore & Gachon University.

Towards a Remote Monitoring of Patient Vital Signs Based on IoT-Based Blockchain Integrity Management Platforms in Smart Hospitals

Abstract: Over the past several years, many healthcare applications have been developed to enhancethe healthcare industry. Recent advancements in information technology and blockchain technologyhave revolutionized electronic healthcare research and industry. The innovation of miniaturizedhealthcare sensors for monitoring patient vital signs has improved and secured the human healthcaresystem. The increase in portable health devices has enhanced the quality of health-monitoringstatus both at an activity/fitness level for self-health tracking and at a medical level, providing moredata to clinicians with potential for earlier diagnosis and guidance of treatment. When sharingpersonal medical information, data security and comfort are essential requirements for interactionwith and collection of electronic medical records. However, it is hard for current systems to meetthese requirements because they have inconsistent security policies and access control structures.The new solutions should be directed towards improving data access, and should be managed bythe government in terms of privacy and security requirements to ensure the reliability of data formedical purposes. Blockchain paves the way for a revolution in the traditional pharmaceuticalindustry and benefits from unique features such as privacy and transparency of data. In this paper,we propose a novel platform for monitoring patient vital signs using smart contracts based onblockchain. The proposed system is designed and developed using hyperledger fabric, which isan enterprise-distributed ledger framework for developing blockchain-based applications. Thisapproach provides several benefits to the patients, such as an extensive, immutable history log, andglobal access to medical information from anywhere at any time. The Libelium e-Health toolkitis used to acquire physiological data. The performance of the designed and developed system isevaluated in terms of transaction per second, transaction latency, and resource utilization usinga standard benchmark tool known as Hyperledger Caliper. It is found that the proposed systemoutperforms the traditional health care system for monitoring patient data.

Peer-to-Peer Energy Trading Mechanism Based on Blockchain and Machine Learning for Sustainable Electrical Power Supply in Smart Grid

Abstract: It is expected that peer to peer energy trading will constitute a significant share of research in upcoming generation power systems due to the rising demand of energy in smart microgrids. However, the on-demand use of energy is considered a big challenge to achieve the optimal cost for households. This paper proposes a blockchain-based predictive energy trading platform to provide real-time support, day-ahead controlling, and generation scheduling of distributed energy resources. The proposed blockchain-based platform consists of two modules; blockchain-based energy trading and smart contract enabled predictive analytics modules. The blockchain module allows peers with real-time energy consumption monitoring, easy energy trading control, reward model, and unchangeable energy trading transaction logs. The smart contract enabled predictive analytics module aims to build a prediction model based on historical energy consumption data to predict short-term energy consumption. This paper uses real energy consumption data acquired from the Jeju province energy department, the Republic of Korea. This study aims to achieve optimal power flow and energy crowdsourcing, supporting energy trading among the consumer and prosumer. Energy trading is based on day-ahead, real-time control, and scheduling of distributed energy resources to meet the smart grid’s load demand. Moreover, we use data mining techniques to perform time-series analysis to extract and analyze underlying patterns from the historical energy consumption data. The time-series analysis supports energy management to devise better future decisions to plan and manage energy resources effectively. To evaluate the proposed predictive model’s performance, we have used several statistical measures, such as mean square error and root mean square error on various machine learning models, namely recurrent neural networks and alike. Moreover, we also evaluate the blockchain platform’s effectiveness through hyperledger calliper in terms of latency, throughput, and resource utilization. Based on the experimental results, the proposed model is effectively used for energy crowdsourcing between the prosumer and consumer to attain service quality.

Intelligent Model to Predict Early Liver Disease using Machine Learning Technique

Abstract: Liver Disease (LD) is the main cause of death worldwide, affecting a large number of people. A variety of factors affect the liver, resulting in this disease. The diagnosis of this condition is both expensive and time-consuming. Machine Learning offers a lot of potential in terms of automated disease diagnosis. As a result, the purpose of this research is to assess the efficacy of various Machine Learning (ML) algorithms to lower the high cost of liver disease diagnosis through prediction. With the current rise in numerous liver disorders, it’s more important than ever to detect liver disease early on. This research proposed intelligent model to predict liver disease using machine learning technique. This proposed model is more effective and comprehensive in terms of performance of 0.884 accuracy, and 0.116 miss-rate.

A Novel Blockchain-Based Integrity and Reliable Veterinary Clinic Information Management System Using Predictive Analytics for Provisioning of Quality Health Services

Abstract: The recent advances in information management systems coupled with machine learning algorithms paved the way for a significant revolution in animal healthcare industries. However, the data in such systems suffer from various challenges such as security, reliability, and convenience, to name a few. Traditional systems are not useful to meet these critical issues because these systems have not a consistent structure for data security and reliability policies. Therefore, a new solution is required to enhance data accessibility and should regulate government security policies to ensure the accountability of the usage of the medical records system. Moreover, it is also required to analyze historical data of veterinary clinic using data mining and machine learning techniques to predict the future appointments scheduling requests, which is essential for veterinary management to drive better future decisions, for instance, future demands of medical supplies and to plan veterinary medical staff, etc. This paper aims to fill the gap by proposing a novel blockchain-based reliable and intelligent veterinary information management system (RIVIMS) using smart contract and machine learning techniques. The proposed RIVIMS consists of two main modules; blockchain-based secured veterinary information management, data and predictive analytics modules. First, a blockchain-based secure and reliable veterinary clinic information management system is developed using Hyperledger Fabric. Second, a smart contract enabled data, and predictive analytics modules are developed using permissioned blockchain framework. The data and predictive modules aim to analyze veterinary clinic patients appointments data in order to discover underlying patterns and build a robust prediction model using machine learning algorithms. The data and predictive helps veterinary management to drive better future business decisions to provide better healthcare services to veterinary patients. Hyperledger Caliper is used as a benchmark tool to evaluate the performance of the developed blockchain-based system in terms of transaction per second, transaction success rate, transaction throughput, and transaction latency. Furthermore, machine learning performance measures have utilized, such as MAE, RMSE, and R2 score to evaluate the overall performance of the prediction model. The experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed RIVIMS.

Optimal Route Recommendation for Waste Carrier Vehicles for Efficient Waste Collection: A Step Forward Towards Sustainable Cities

Abstract: The exponentially growing population, urbanization, and economic development have led to the rising generation of municipal solid waste. Municipal solid waste management is thus a significant hurdle for urban societies as it consumes a large chunk of public funds, and, when mishandled, it can lead to environmental and social hazards. Some of the prerequisites required for effective waste management are the monitoring of bins, timely collection of bins, and prioritization of those areas which produce more solid waste. In this paper, we propose an optimal route recommendation system for waste carriers vehicles to effectively collect solid waste based on the profile of a particular area. This article contributes with a multi-objective optimization approach to generate a route by minimizing the route distance and maximizing the amount of waste. Then, a family of evolutionary methods is employed to solve the proposed objective function and find the optimal route for waste carrier vehicles. The experiment is carried out on the real-world solid waste data of Jeju Island, South Korea. The data is processed to predict the behavior of people of a specified grid location in terms of waste disposal. Therefore, the recommendation system caters to the predicted waste across a set of bins inside the area, and considering the constraints such as total allowed distance and time, proposes a route that is best in terms of distance (fuel consumption) and waste collection. Different use cases are illustrated to signify the proposed system, and results indicate that it can be a step forward for the implementation of smart cities, which is the goal of Jeju Island.

Application of Blockchain and Internet of Things in Healthcare and Medical Sector: Applications, Challenges, and Future Perspectives

Abstract: Internet of Things (IoT) is one of the recent innovations in Information Technology, which intends to interconnect the physical and digital worlds. It introduces a vision of smartness by enabling communication between objects and humans through the Internet. IoT has diverse applications in almost all sectors like Smart Health, Smart Transportation, and Smart Cities, etc. In healthcare applications, IoT eases communication between doctors and patients as the latter can be diagnosed remotely in emergency scenarios through body sensor networks and wearable sensors. However, using IoT in healthcare systems can lead to violation of the privacy of patients. Thus, security should be taken into consideration. Blockchain is one of the trending research topics nowadays and can be applied to the majority of IoT scenarios. Few major reasons for using the Blockchain in healthcare systems are its prominent features, i.e., Decentralization, Immutability, Security and Privacy, and Transparency. This paper’s main objective was to enhance the functionality of healthcare systems using emerging and innovative computer technologies like IoT and Blockchain. So, initially, a brief introduction to the basic concepts of IoT and Blockchain is provided. After this, the applicability of IoT and Blockchain in the medical sector is explored in three major areas—drug traceability, remote patient-monitoring, and medical record management. At last, the challenges of deploying IoT and Blockchain in healthcare systems are discussed.

Design and Implementation of an Integrated IoT Blockchain Platform for Sensing Data Integrity

Abstract: With the rapid development of communication technologies, the Internet of Things (IoT) is getting out of its infancy, into full maturity, and tends to be developed in an explosively rapid way, with more and more data transmitted and processed. As a result, the ability to manage devices deployed worldwide has been given more and advanced requirements in practical application performances. Most existing IoT platforms are highly centralized architectures, which suffer from various technical limitations, such as a cyber-attack and single point of failure. A new solution direction is essential to enhance data accessing, while regulating it with government mandates in privacy and security. In this paper, we propose an integrated IoT platform using blockchain technology to guarantee sensing data integrity. The aim of this platform is to afford the device owner a practical application that provides a comprehensive, immutable log and allows easy access to their devices deployed in different domains. It also provides characteristics of general IoT systems, allows for real-time monitoring, and control between the end user and device. The business logic of the application is defined by the smart contract, which contains rules and conditions. The proposed approach is backed by a proof of concept implementation in realistic IoT scenarios, utilizing Raspberry Pi devices and a permissioned network called Hyperledger Fabric. Lastly, a benchmark study using various performance metrics is made to highlight the significance of the proposed work. The analysis results indicate that the designed platform is suitable for the resource-constrained IoT architecture and is scalable to be extended in various IoT scenarios.

The Role of Internet of Things (IoT) in Smart Cities: Technology Roadmap-oriented Approaches

Abstract: Since the concept of a smart city was introduced, IoT (Internet of Things) has beenconsidered the key infrastructure in a smart city. However, there are currently no detailed explanations of the technical contributions of IoT in terms of the management, development, and improvements of smart cities. Therefore, the current study describes the importance of IoT technologies on the technology roadmap (TRM) of a smart city. Moreover, the survey with about 200 experts was conducted to investigate both the importance and essentiality of detail components of IoT technologies for a smart city. Based on the survey results, the focal points and essential elements for the successful developments of a smart city are presented.

A survey on the adoption of blockchain in IoT: challenges and solutions

Abstract: Conventional Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystems involve data streaming from sensors, through Fog devices to a centralized Cloud server. Issues that arise include privacy concerns due to third party management of Cloud servers, single points of failure, a bottleneck in data flows and difficulties in regularly updating firmware for millions of smart devices from a point of security and maintenance perspective. Blockchain technologies avoid trusted third parties and safeguard against a single point of failure and other issues. This has inspired researchers to investigate blockchain’s adoption into IoT ecosystem. In this paper, recent state-of-the-arts advances in blockchain for IoT, blockchain for Cloud IoT and blockchain for Fog IoT in the context of eHealth, smart cities, intelligent transport and other applications are analyzed. Obstacles, research gaps and potential solutions are also presented.

IoT-Blockchain Enabled Optimized Provenance System for Food Industry 4.0 Using Advanced Deep Learning

Abstract: Agriculture and livestock play a vital role in social and economic stability. Food safety and transparency in the food supply chain are a significant concern for many people. Internet of Things (IoT) and blockchain are gaining attention due to their success in versatile applications. They generate a large amount of data that can be optimized and used efficiently by advanced deep learning (ADL) techniques. The importance of such innovations from the viewpoint of supply chain management is significant in different processes such as for broadened visibility, provenance, digitalization, disintermediation, and smart contracts. This article takes the secure IoT-blockchain data of Industry 4.0 in the food sector as a research object. Using ADL techniques, we propose a hybrid model based on recurrent neural networks (RNN). Therefore, we used long short-term memory (LSTM) and gated recurrent units (GRU) as a prediction model and genetic algorithm (GA) optimization jointly to optimize the parameters of the hybrid model. We select the optimal training parameters by GA and finally cascade LSTM with GRU. We evaluated the performance of the proposed system for a different number of users. This paper aims to help supply chain practitioners to take advantage of the state-of-the-art technologies; it will also help the industry to make policies according to the predictions of ADL.