Research Challenges and Opportunities in Security and Privacy of Blockchain Technologies

Submission Deadline: 30 November 2017

IEEE Access invites manuscript submissions in the area of Research Challenges and Opportunities in Security and Privacy of Blockchain Technologies.

Blockchain is an increasingly popular networking technology for streamlining business processes, which uses a peer-to-peer (P2P) network. In other words, no central authority (e.g. traditional financial institution) is required to conduct a transaction. Due to the decentralized nature, blockchain allows one to undertake and verify transactions in real-time. In recent times, many applications based on the blockchain technology have been proposed. One such popular real-world example application is Bitcoin. However, there are underlying security and privacy issues. For example, once a public key has been linked with an individual’s identity, one could browse previous transactions on the blockchain and view all transactions associated with the particular public key. One key research challenge is how to balance security and privacy of an individual with accountability. For example, how can we allow the tracing of illegal activities or users (e.g. money laundering and cybercrime) without breaking the decentralization property of the system?

This Special Section in IEEE Access solicits state-of-the-art technical research results and survey on secure and privacy-preserving blockchain technology, as well as novel applications providing security and privacy-preserving features/functionalities in the blockchain technology.

  • Access Control and Blockchain Security
  • Anonymity
  • Applications of Blockchain Technologies (e.g. Critical Infrastructures)
  • Blockchain Technology Forensics (and Anti-Forensics)
  • Cryptanalysis
  • Data Confidentiality
  • Data Mining Security
  • Economic Aspects of Blockchain Technologies
  • Implementation of Secure Application System
  • Privacy Preserving
  • Security Modelling and Threat

 

We also highly recommend the submission of multimedia with each article as it significantly increases the visibility, downloads, and citations of articles.

 

Associate Editor: Kim-Kwang Raymond Choo, The University of Texas at San Antonio, USA

Guest Editors:

  1. Debiao He, Wuhan University, China
  2. Neeraj Kumar, Thapar University, India
  3. Aniello Castiglione, University of Salerno, Italy

 

Relevant IEEE Access Special Sections:

  1. The Internet of Energy: Architectures, Cyber Security, and Applications (Part II)
  2. Privacy Preservation for Large-Scale User Data in Social Networks
  3. Mobile Edge Computing

IEEE Access Editor-in-Chief: Michael Pecht, Professor and Director, CALCE, University of Maryland

Paper submission: Contact Associate Editor and submit manuscript to:
http://ieee.atyponrex.com/journal/ieee-access

For inquiries regarding this Special Section, please contact: raymond.choo@fulbrightmail.org

Energy Management in Buildings

Submission Deadline: 31 May 2018

IEEE Access invites manuscript submissions in the area of Energy Management in Buildings.

Buildings can be viewed as small cities due to their size, users, and mixed complex activities. The energy and environmental impact caused by buildings through provision of support services and activities and operations, such as working and living, could be considerably reduced by an effective choice of organizational and managerial measures. Groups of buildings create an urban-kind climate which cannot be neglected. To design and operate sustainable buildings, it is necessary to factor a number of parameters, such as the interaction of indoor-outdoor environment strategic planning and operational processes. Moreover, towards this “district approach,” the use of buildings as a field of application, is considerably advantageous compared to a community or city district as the overall area typically belongs to a single owner.

Aside from this, buildings consume a large portion of the world’s energy and are a significant source of greenhouse gas emissions. The nature of buildings is changing from static and passive structures to dynamic and active environments. The concept of sustainable and intelligent buildings is emerging as an important area for the energy initiative. Therefore, effective energy management is becoming more feasible using innovative technologies.

Till now, limited research efforts have been done and a limited number of papers have been published on the whole roadmap of new energy management system in buildings, towards new research and applications issues. The goal of this Special Section in IEEE Access is to present and highlight the advances and the latest novel and emerging technologies, implementations and applications in the field of energy management in buildings. This will provide readers with a clearer understanding of the design and development of energy management in buildings.

The topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

  • The technologies to perform effective energy management of buildings.
  • The research trends concerning the operation of Buildings in a smart grids’ framework.
  • The necessary transformations that will support the roadmap towards zero energy districts and communities.
  • The best energy conservation and renewable energy mixtures to reduce the energy consumption of buildings.
  • Efficient and smart techniques to predict the energy consumption and the environmental quality of buildings.
  • Thermal comfort conditions and indoor air quality in buildings and propose methods to improve them.
  • Stochastic optimization methods for distributed energy management in buildings.
  • Hierarchical control applications to distributed energy management in buildings.
  • Energy management buildings and other demand-side applications (e.g.,EVs and DR).
  • Big data analytics and visualization for distributed energy management in buildings.
  • Distributed wireless sensors for energy management in buildings.
  • Energy management system security, resilience and extensibility as a cyber-physical-system (CPS).

 

We also highly recommend the submission of multimedia with each article as it significantly increases the visibility, downloads, and citations of articles.

 

Associate Editor: Kun Wang, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, P. R. China

Guest Editors:

  1. Yi Qian, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, USA
  2. Joel J. P. C. Rodrigues, National Institute of Telecommunications (Inatel), Brazil; Instituto de Telecomunicações, Portugal
  3. Fei Richard Yu, Carleton University, Canada
  4. Peng Li, The University of Aizu, Japan

 

Relevant IEEE Access Special Sections:

  1. The Internet of Energy: Architectures, Cyber Security, and Applications
  2. Power Quality and Harmonics Issues of Future and Smart Grids
  3. Battery Energy Storage and Management Systems

 

IEEE Access Editor-in-Chief: Michael Pecht, Professor and Director, CALCE, University of Maryland

Paper submission: Contact Associate Editor and submit manuscript to:
http://ieee.atyponrex.com/journal/ieee-access

For inquiries regarding this Special Section, please contact: specialsections@ieee.org

Key Technologies for Smart Factory of Industry 4.0

Submission Deadline: 30 September 2017

IEEE Access invites manuscript submissions in the area of Key Technologies for Smart Factory of Industry 4.0.

Due to the growing global economy and demand for customized products, the manufacturing industry has been transitioning from a sellers’ market to a buyers’ market. This transition requires deeper conversion towards manufacturing structures to handle the increasing production complexity. The smart factory of Industry 4.0 can provide a solution for handling the complexity through the establishment of intelligent products and production processes. Realization of smart factory will be possible with the increased adoption of Internet of Things (IoT) and Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS). Smart factory will make the interactions between humans, machines, and products become a highly competitive area for market capitalization. With the foundations of smart factory based on IoT and CPS, various system technologies and architectures have emerged over the past few years. Even though, the smart factory plays an important role in Industry 4.0, it faces many challenges including structural, operational, and managerial independence of the shop floor and enterprise constituent systems, interoperability, plug and play, self-adaptation, reliability, energy-awareness, high-level cross-layer integration and cooperation, event propagation and management, and industrial big data analysis.

This Special Section in IEEE Access will bring together academic and industrial researchers to identify and discuss technical challenges and recent results related to smart factory of Industry 4.0. To meet the requirements of smart factory, in addition to the need for new concepts and design approaches, improvements in the areas of standardized communication mechanism, efficient monitoring, effective and flexible manufacturing resource management, transparent data processing, better system scalability, and reconfiguration are required. The next industrial revolution is still in its early days, and a large part of the potential for value creation is still untapped. In order to achieve the economic goal chased by the markets, the key technologies for smart factory must be discussed and studied. Therefore, the topics considered for this Special Section will discuss the analytical capabilities that are required to capture the full potential of smart factory, ranging from embedded systems that are already existing in the bottom layer to some cloud techniques that have not yet been used in the top layer.

In general, Industry 4.0 includes the horizontal integration, end-to-end digital integration, and vertical integration. The vertical integration refers to the smart factory in the form of CPS or IoT. This Special Section in IEEE Access mainly focuses on the key technologies for smart factory of Industry 4.0 (e.g., industrial wireless network, industrial SDN, and industrial cloud) rather than all the domains of Industry 4.0. The topics of interests for this special section include, but not limited to:

  • Artificial intelligence and autonomous systems in smart factory
  • Smart agents and systems in smart factory
  • System engineering and human factors for Industry 4.0
  • Semantic technologies for manufacturing cyber-physical systems
  • Cloud computing techniques for smart factory
  • Cloud-assisted intelligent devices, e.g., cloud robotics
  • Wireless sensor and actuator networks
  • Information coordination and interaction
  • Industrial integration and industrial information integration in smart factory
  • Software-defined industrial internet of things
  • Machine learning and decision science models for data analysis
  • Tools and technologies for deploying and managing big data
  • Security in industrial networks
  • Security and privacy protection

We also highly recommend the submission of multimedia with each article as it significantly increases the visibility, downloads, and citations of articles.

 

Associate Editor: Jiafu Wan, South China University of Technology, China

Guest Editors:

  1. Min Xia, University of British Columbia, Canada
  2. Jun Hong, Xi’an Jiaotong University, China
  3. Zhibo Pang, ABB Corporate Research, Sweden
  4. Bharat Jayaraman, SUNY Buffalo, USA
  5. Fangyang Shen, New York City College of Technology, USA

 

Related IEEE Access Special Sections:

  1. Industry 4.0
  2. Cooperative and Intelligent Sensing
  3. Intelligent Systems for the Internet of Things

 

IEEE Access Editor-in-Chief: Michael Pecht, Professor and Director, CALCE, University of Maryland

Paper submission: Contact Associate Editor and submit manuscript to:
http://ieee.atyponrex.com/journal/ieee-access

For inquiries regarding this Special Section, please contact: Bora M. Onat, Managing Editor, IEEE Access (Phone: (732) 562-6036, specialsections@ieee.org)

Multiphase Flow Measurement: Techniques and Applications

Submission Deadline: 31 March 2017

IEEE Access invites manuscript submissions in the area of Multiphase Flow Measurement: Techniques and Applications.

Multiphase flow is a commonly seen complex process in industries such as petroleum and chemical engineering industries. Understanding its flow mechanics and establishing computational models require precise measurement of its parameters. However, measuring the parameters of multiphase flow has been considered an ultimate challenge during the past decades. It is of significance to scientific research and also of practical value to the industries.

The measuring techniques of multiphase flow usually incorporate the state-of-the-art of applied physics, and the modeling process requires profound knowledge about the multiphase flow dynamics. New measuring techniques, such as process tomography, optical fiber, ultrasound, PIV, X-ray and MRI, have been developed specifically for multiphase flow measurement. Traditional measuring techniques such as differential pressure, turbine meters, have also been applied to multiphase flow measurement by reinventing new applications. Generally, the multiphase flow measurement methods and instrumentations are application-dependent, i.e. a certain technique operates properly only in one or a range of applications, however a universal solution has not been proposed. Therefore, it has attracted research contributions from many areas such as biomedical engineering, chemical engineering, instrumentation and materials.

In addition, practical meters for multiphase flow measurement have been in high demand by the industrial companies to solve the measurement and control problems in complex processes. Thus, it is a typical application-driven research topic.

The topics of interest include, but are not limited to the following:

  • Flow process tomography and imaging
  • Multiphase flow meters
  • Multisensor data fusion for flow measurement
  • Novel sensor design and applications for multiphase flow measurement
  • Non-intrusive detection techniques for multiphase flow
  • Flow pattern recognition and analysis
  • Data process in multiphase flow
  • Industrial applications
  • 2D/3D Flow field measurement and reconstruction
  • Measurement modeling for multiphase flow measurement

We also highly recommend the submission of multimedia with each article as it significantly increases the visibility, downloads, and citations of articles.

Associate Editor: Chao Tan, Tianjin University, China

Guest Editors:

  1. Jiabin Jia, The University of Edinburgh, U.K.
  2. Chuanlong Xu, Southeast University, China
  3. Zhiqiang Sun, Central South University, China
  4. Feng Ding, Quebec Industrial Research Center, Canada
  5. David Millington, National Engineering Laboratory, U.K.

Related IEEE Access Special Sections:
1) Cooperative and Intelligent Sensing

IEEE Access Editor-in-Chief: Michael Pecht, Professor and Director, CALCE, University of Maryland

Paper submission: Contact Associate Editor and submit manuscript to:
http://ieee.atyponrex.com/journal/ieee-access

For inquiries regarding this Special Section, please contact: Bora M. Onat, Managing Editor, IEEE Access (Phone: (732) 562-6036, specialsections@ieee.org)