It is paramount for the circular economy that the supply of products, components and materials match the demand for effective re-use and re-manufacturing. In this paper, we present a tool for balancing fairness and environmental impact (e.g., from transport) in trading goods subject to demand-supply matching (DSM) for circularity. The tool addresses the problem of controlling this balance when multiple demanders buy goods from multiple suppliers, which may implement a volume-dependent price model. In such cases, identifying the best possible set of procurements to obtain a desired balance demands a model that provides a predictable output from declarative statements on this balance. We evaluate our tool using simulations to demonstrate its usefulness in evaluating the effects on fairness between trading actors from regulatory policies related to environmental impact. We show that our DSM ranking tool can be used to evaluate such effects using simulations of different market scenarios. Based on these results, we discuss extensions of the model for it to support additional such statements in more complex DSM scenarios that for example also include seller reputation as a matching criterion.

Data is important for the industry to take advantage of digitalization, realize automation, assure quality, and more. Values from data are not only created individually by companies, but also in eco-systems in which data is shared among participating organizations. Secure data sharing is essential in such eco-systems to prevent unauthorized access and use of the data. Usage control extends traditional access control with restrictions concerned with requirements that pertain to data processing contractual obligations, rather than data access provisions only. Thus, usage control is relevant in the context of intellectual property protection, compliance with regulations, and digital rights management. This paper presents a method to negotiate contractual obligations and access provisions, and automatically enforce those provisions with access control. Finalized negotiations establish Ricardian contracts at two levels; a superordinate level with a connected subordinate level. These contracts contain provisions in terms of access control attributes. Using our implementation of a negotiation engine we demonstrate the automatic creation of NIST Next Generation Access Control (NGAC) access control policies. Our negotiation engine uses a lightweight model for the storage of an unforgeable and immutable log of the established contracts based on digital signatures and hashing.

The efficient matching of demanded products, components and materials for re-use and re-manufacturing is paramount for the circular economy. In this paper, we present a model for automated demand-supply matching (DSM) that provides means to rank candidate suppliers according to predefined procurement criteria. Preparing for the acquisition of End-of-life (EoL) products, components, and materials, actors in need of such goods may publish calls for tenders including those criteria. Suppliers can then submit their offerings meeting the needs as stated by one or more calls for tenders. Our automated DSM model evaluates the received offerings based on the procurement criteria to rank suppliers according to each call for tender. Alternatively, suppliers may publish their offerings beforehand, thereby making it possible for demanders to search for matching offerings that meet their needs and to automatically evaluate them using the DSM ranking model. Our basic model takes into account transportation cost, seller reputation and price. We discuss the flexibility of the DSM model in incorporating additional procurement criteria to examine the general applicability of its conceptual design.

In this paper, we define a multi-attribute auctioning system for the circular economy and the trade of products, components and materials subject to recycling. The increasing popularity of auctioning systems for buying and selling goods has led to the adaptation of them to diverse and particular scenarios, many of which require support for attributes like delivery time, quality, etc. Such attributes allow for more explicit and precise negotiations than traditional auctioning systems where only price is taken into account. The circular economy concept replaces end-of-life with the reuse of various goods, aiming to keep as much value as possible of any asset. By allowing users to adjust attributes in multi-step negotiations according to their economic and ecological needs, better deals can be achieved. We address this potential with our multi-attribute, and multi-step auctioning system. The system is based on transparency and fairness principles, and addresses requirements for flexibility in what attributes can be used, and the need for a semi-transparent auctioning procedure. We present a winner determination approach based on scoring protocol based on weights for different input attributes. Our auctioning system uses a signature chain data structure to provide transaction traceability. We demonstrate using a generic example that the proposed system supports simple and flexible multi-attribute auctions.

The construction industry is characterized by its extensive and dynamic collaborations between contractors providing various services and expertise. In such eco-systems, the secure sharing of information, data and equipment challenges the access control needs to be application agnostic. Furthermore, it needs fine-grained access policies including means for abstraction to ease administration, and support for delegated authorization in Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) based systems. In this paper, we explore the use of delegated access using OAuth 2.0 with Attribute-Based Access Control (ABAC) for the collaborative sharing of equipment at construction sites. In particular, we investigate the use of contextual attributes to capture the dynamic aspects, such as location and urgency, in the booking of construction lifts. Through this study, we propose a solution based on the IoT Application-scoped Access Control as a Service (IAACaaS) architecture model combined with NIST Next Generation Access Control (NGAC). We present an architecture for a general Identity and Access Management (IAM) system for the construction industry, and provide a design and guide for implementation of this architecture in terms how key functionalities should be captured as reusable micro-services. Moreover, we describe how these micro-services can be combined to make the system a general and reusable solution providing access control for collaborative sharing of data, information and equipment at construction sites.

In this paper, we define an auction protocol and implementation of a decentralized and distributed auctioning platform for demand-supply matching of components and materials subject to recycling. Auctioning is the process of buying and selling goods or services by offering them up for bid, taking bids, and then selling the item to a winner according to preset rules. Some auction types relies on sealed-bids while others implement an open-bid procedure that allows for multiple bids before a known or unknown deadline. The English auction and its variants is most common type. It relies on that the current highest bid is always available to potential bidders. Online auction platforms are nowadays used to trade various services and goods. We address the iterative negotiations in form of auction bids aiming at signed contractual agreements stated in legal prose and captured by Ricardian contracts. We evaluate our model towards requirements including privacy, transparency and fairness in terms of acknowledged publishing of highest bids and the ordered arrival of individual bids. In addition, we demonstrate the mechanisms for distributed storage of cryptographically signed Ricardian contracts, omitting the need for trusting the auctioneer or relying on a trusted third party for this storage.

This research paper presents CoMA, a Container Monitoring Agent, that oversees resource consumption of operating system level virtualization platforms, primarily targeting container-based platforms ...

This paper presents a framework for Aggregated Social Graphs, the ASG Framework, for developing applications that harness information available on social networking sites and telecom platforms to make communication simpler and richer. The framework aggregates users social graph by harnessing contact and social information from multiple communication environments and then calculating the social strength between the users, based on the users communication history. The framework discovers communication patterns in different level which is eventually used to simplify and enhance communication services by inviting appropriate users for collaboration, selecting suitable tools for communication and prioritizing information flows over the cloud. The framework also enables new types of applications such as social search clients, smart dialers or contact applications.

This article presents the conceptual communication model of dynamic groups, that dynamically utilizes three traditional communication metaphors through the use of context-based information. Dynamic groups makes creation, management and usage of groups easy. It enables social network structures to be maintained in both virtual and face-to-face settings as well as in the combination thereof. This article defines the dynamic management of advanced contact lists which can include presence and status information, a/synchronous multimedia communication tools, and methods for structuring social networks. It also contains an initial evaluation and a proposed architecture for technical realisation.

An important part of making a wearable computer un-obtrusive is the user interface and the way it interrupts the user. The amount of interruption that have to be made on the users primary task should be minimized. Usage without interruption is of course best for the performance of the primary task but is often not possible as many tasks that the wearable computer is involved in do need interaction with the user. It is therefore important to understand what type of interruption that will benefit the user most. The question about which interruption that causes the least amount of stress for the user is as important as which interruption that gives the best performance. This paper continues on previous work where performance of the users was measured for different types of interruption. In this paper subjective data is analyzed to understand how to build user interfaces for wearable computers and head mounted displays that considers stress and other subjective variables.

A central issue within any distributed computer environment is how to control and manage running applications. This paper presents an implementation of a framework for control and management of distributed applications and components using IP-multicast. The framework allows for easy and scalable control of single applications, groups of applications or parts of applications using a new agent-based architecture. Messaging is done using the control bus and the scalable reliable real-time transfer protocol for reliable distribution of data. The paper presents how this framework is integrated into Java-based applications and how developers specify access points. The paper also presents an application called multicast Manager, mManager, a Java implementation that provides a user interface to the framework. The mManager allows administrators to get an overview of currently running applications and if necessary control these applications. The paper presents example usage scenarios where the framework is used to create bandwidth-adaptive applications and better group awareness.

As more and more applications on the Internet become network aware the need and possibility to remotely control them becomes larger. This paper presents a framework for control and management of distributed applications and components. This is done using IP-multicast and an agent based application architecture. The target of the framework is to allow for resource discovery of both controllable elements and available control points in the these elements as well as real-time control. All this is done in scalable and secure way based on IP-multicast and asymmetric cryptography. The presented framework is also independent of the underlying transport mechanism to allow for flexibility and easy deployment. The framework bandwidth usage and introduced control delay is presented. Details on the reference implementation of the framework and example usage scenarios where the framework is used to create bandwidth adaptive applications and better group awareness is also presented.

This paper presents the mStar environment, which creates an environment for truly a mChat, which allows for text based group chat; mVote, which allows for distributed voting and mWeb for shared WWW objects. These are all desktop and IP-multicast based and symmetric. The mStar environment also includes mh4OD, which is a VCR-like tool for recording and playback of teamwork sessions, and mTunne1, which is an application for handling IP-multicast traffic on narrow links in the network (such as ISDN/modem) and network segments that does hot support IP:multicast.. It allows for scaling and tranrforming of the network based data in various ways. KepOrdS: IP-multicast, desktop conferencing, distributed presentations, digital recoding, teamwork, distance education, better-than-being-there.