A cyber security architecture for military networks using a cognitive network approach

Cyber security is one of the main topics that are discussed around the world today. The threat is real, and it is unlikely to diminish. People, business, governments, and even armed forces are networked in a way or another. Thus, the cyber threat is also facing military networking. On the other hand, the concept of Network Centric Warfare sets high requirements for military tactical data communications and security. A challenging networking environment and cyber threats force us to consider new approaches to build security on the military communication systems. The purpose of this thesis is to develop a cyber security architecture for military networks, and to evaluate the designed architecture. The architecture is described as a technical functionality. As a new approach, the thesis introduces Cognitive Networks (CN) which are a theoretical concept to build more intelligent, dynamic and even secure communication networks. The cognitive networks are capable of observe the networking environment, make decisions for optimal performance and adapt its system parameter according to the decisions. As a result, the thesis presents a five-layer cyber security architecture that consists of security elements controlled by a cognitive process. The proposed architecture includes the infrastructure, services and application layers that are managed and controlled by the cognitive and management layers. The architecture defines the tasks of the security elements at a functional level without introducing any new protocols or algorithms. For evaluating two separated method were used. The first method is based on the SABSA framework that uses a layered approach to analyze overall security of an organization. The second method was a scenario based method in which a risk severity level is calculated. The evaluation results show that the proposed architecture fulfills the security requirements at least at a high level. However, the evaluation of the proposed architecture proved to be very challenging. Thus, the evaluation results must be considered very critically. The thesis proves the cognitive networks are a promising approach, and they provide lots of benefits when designing a cyber security architecture for the tactical military networks. However, many implementation problems exist, and several details must be considered and studied during the future work.

Deregulation’s Impact on the Railway Freight Transport Sector’s Future in the Baltic Sea Region

The European transport market has confronted several changes during the last decade. Due to European Union legislative mandates, the railway freight market was deregulated in 2007. The market followed the trend started by other transport modes as well as other previously regulated industries such as banking, telecommunications and energy. Globally, the first country to deregulate the railway freight market was the United States, with the introduction of the Staggers Rail Act in 1980. Some European countries decided to follow suit already before regulation was mandated; among the forerunners were the United Kingdom, Sweden and Germany. The previous research has concentrated only on these countries, which has provided an interesting research gap for this thesis. The Baltic Sea Region consists of countries with different kinds of liberalization paths, including Sweden and Germany, which have been on the frontline, whereas Lithuania and Finland have only one active railway undertaking, the incumbent. The transport market of the European Union is facing further challenges in the near future, due to the Sulphur Directive, oil dependency and the changing structure of European rail networks. In order to improve the accessibility of this peripheral area, further action is required. This research focuses on topics such as the progression of deregulation, barriers to entry, country-specific features, cooperation and internationalization. Based on the research results, it can be stated that the Baltic Sea Region’s railway freight market is expected to change in the future. Further private railway undertakings are anticipated, and these would change the market structure. The realization of European Union’s plans to increase the improved rail network to cover the Baltic States is strongly hoped for, and railway freight market counterparts inside and among countries are starting to enhance their level of cooperation. The Baltic Sea Region countries have several special national characteristics which influence the market and should be taken into account when companies evaluate possible market entry actions. According to thesis interviews, the Swedish market has a strong level of cooperation in the form of an old-boy network, and is supported by a positive attitude of the incumbent towards the private railway undertakings. This has facilitated the entry process of newcomers, and currently the market has numerous operating railway undertakings. A contrary example was found from Poland, where the incumbent sent old rolling stock to the scrap yard rather than sell it to private railway undertakings. The importance of personal relations is highlighted in Russia, followed by the railway market’s strong political bond with politics. Nonetheless, some barriers to entry are shared by the Baltic Sea Region, the main ones being acquisition of rolling stock, bureaucracy and needed investments. The railway freight market is internationalizing, which is perceived via several alliances as well as the increased number of mergers and acquisitions. After deregulation, markets seem to increase the number of railway undertakings at a rather fast pace, but with the passage of time, the larger operators tend to acquire smaller ones. Therefore, it is expected that in a decade’s time, the number of railway undertakings will start to decrease in the deregulation pioneer countries, while the ones coming from behind might still experience an increase. The Russian market is expected to be totally liberalized, and further alliances between the Russian Railways and European railway undertakings are expected to occur. The Baltic Sea Region’s railway freight market is anticipated to improve, and, based on the interviewees’ comments, attract more cargoes from road to rail.

Control of transients in water distribution networks by H¥ Control

In this work, a controller for regulating the transients in water distribution networks is established. The control technique is the H¥ Control. The developed controller is applied to a water distribution network and the results of this application demonstrate that the technique allowed the establishment of a robust controller, capable of attenuating the disturbances in a suitable way, being effective in controlling the oscillations of the state variables in question.

Modelling flexible asset management in industrial maintenance companies and networks

The tightening competition and increasing dynamism have created an emerging need for flexible asset management. This means that the changes of market demand should be responded to with adjustments in the amount of assets tied to the balance sheets of companies. On the other hand, industrial maintenance has recently experienced drastic changes, which have led to an increase in the number of maintenance networks (consisting of customer companies that buy maintenance services, as well as various supplier companies) and inter-organizational partnerships. However, the research on maintenance networks has not followed the changes in the industry. Instead, there is a growing need for new ways of collaboration between partnering companies to enhance the competitiveness of the whole maintenance network. In addition, it is more and more common for companies to pursue lean operations in their businesses. This thesis shows how flexible asset management can increase the profitability of maintenance companies and networks under dynamic operating conditions, and how the additional value can then be shared between the network partners. Firstly, I have conducted a systematic literature review to identify what kind of requirements for asset management models are set by the increasing dynamism. Then I have responded to these requirements by constructing an analytical model for flexible asset management, linking asset management to the profitability and financial state of a company. The thesis uses the model to show how flexible asset management can increase profitability in maintenance companies and networks, and how the created value can be shared in the networks to reach a win-win situation. The research indicates that the existing models for asset management are heterogeneous by nature due to the various definitions of ‘asset management’. I conclude that there is a need for practical asset management models which address assets comprehensively with an inter-organizational, strategic view. The comprehensive perspective, taking all kinds of asset types into account, is needed to integrate the research on asset management with the strategic management of companies and networks. I will show that maintenance companies can improve their profitability by increasing the flexibility of their assets. In maintenance networks, reorganizing the ownership of the assets among the different network partners can create additional value. Finally, I will introduce flexible asset management contracts for maintenance networks. These contracts address the value sharing related to reorganizing the ownership of assets according to the principles of win-win situations.

Communication Solutions for LVDC Island Networks

Production and generation of electrical power is evolving to more environmental friendly technologies and schemes. Pushed by the increasing cost of fossil fuels, the operational costs of producing electrical power with fossil fuels and the effect in the environment, like pollution and global warming, renewable energy sources gain con-stant impulse into the global energy economy. In consequence, the introduction of distributed energy sources has brought a new complexity to the electrical networks. In the new concept of smart grids and decen-tralized power generation; control, protection and measurement are also distributed and requiring, among other things, a new scheme of communication to operate with each other in balance and improve performance. In this research, an analysis of different communication technologies (power line communication, Ethernet over unshielded twisted pair (UTP), optic fiber, Wi-Fi, Wi-MAX, and Long Term Evolution) and their respective characteristics will be carried out. With the objective of pointing out strengths and weaknesses from different points of view (technical, economical, deployment, etc.) to establish a richer context on which a decision for communication approach can be done depending on the specific application scenario of a new smart grid deployment. As a result, a description of possible optimal deployment solutions for communication will be shown considering different options for technologies, and a mention of different important considerations to be taken into account will be made for some of the possible network implementation scenarios.

Impact of reliability of supply on long-term development approaches to electricity distribution networks

The Finnish electricity distribution sector, rural areas in particular, is facing major challenges because of the economic regulation, tightening supply security requirements and the ageing network asset. Therefore, the target in the distribution network planning and asset management is to develop and renovate the networks to meet these challenges in compliance with the regulations in an economically feasible way. Concerning supply security, the new Finnish Electricity Market Act limits the maximum duration of electricity supply interruptions to six hours in urban areas and 36 hours in rural areas. This has a significant impact on distribution network planning, especially in rural areas where the distribution networks typically require extensive modifications and renovations to meet the supply security requirements. This doctoral thesis introduces a methodology to analyse electricity distribution system development. The methodology is based on and combines elements of reliability analysis, asset management and economic regulation. The analysis results can be applied, for instance, to evaluate the development of distribution reliability and to consider actions to meet the tightening regulatory requirements. Thus, the methodology produces information for strategic decision-making so that DSOs can respond to challenges arising in the electricity distribution sector. The key contributions of the thesis are a network renovation concept for rural areas, an analysis to assess supply security, and an evaluation of the effects of economic regulation on the strategic network planning. In addition, the thesis demonstrates how the reliability aspect affects the placement of automation devices and how the reserve power can be arranged in a rural area network.

Mathematics inspired by Darwin. Adaptive dynamics of dispersal and cooperation

In 1859, Charles Darwin published his theory of evolution by natural selection, the process occurring based on fitness benefits and fitness costs at the individual level. Traditionally, evolution has been investigated by biologists, but it has induced mathematical approaches, too. For example, adaptive dynamics has proven to be a very applicable framework to the purpose. Its core concept is the invasion fitness, the sign of which tells whether a mutant phenotype can invade the prevalent phenotype. In this thesis, four real-world applications on evolutionary questions are provided. Inspiration for the first two studies arose from a cold-adapted species, American pika. First, it is studied how the global climate change may affect the evolution of dispersal and viability of pika metapopulations. Based on the results gained here, it is shown that the evolution of dispersal can result in extinction and indeed, evolution of dispersalshould be incorporated into the viability analysis of species living in fragmented habitats. The second study is focused on the evolution of densitydependent dispersal in metapopulations with small habitat patches. It resulted a very surprising unintuitive evolutionary phenomenon, how a non-monotone density-dependent dispersal may evolve. Cooperation is surprisingly common in many levels of life, despite of its obvious vulnerability to selfish cheating. This motivated two applications. First, it is shown that density-dependent cooperative investment can evolve to have a qualitatively different, monotone or non-monotone, form depending on modelling details. The last study investigates the evolution of investing into two public-goods resources. The results suggest one general path by which labour division can arise via evolutionary branching. In addition to applications, two novel methodological derivations of fitness measures in structured metapopulations are given.

Creating an open-books implementation framework for a maintenance-related value-based life-cycle model

This study is a qualitative action research by its nature with elements of personal design in the form of a tangible model implementation framework construction. Utilized empirical data has been gathered via two questionnaires in relation to the arranged four workshop events with twelve individual participants. Five of them represented maintenance customers, three maintenance service providers and four equipment providers respectively. Further, there are two main research objectives in proportion to the two complementary focusing areas of this thesis. Firstly, the value-based life-cycle model, which first version has already been developed prior to this thesis, requires updating in order to increase its real-life applicability as an inter-firm decision-making tool in industrial maintenance. This first research objective is fulfilled by improving appearance, intelligibility and usability of the above-mentioned model. In addition, certain new features are also added. The workshop participants from the collaborating companies were reasonably pleased with made changes, although further attention will be required in future on the model’s intelligibility in particular as main results, charts and values were all reckoned as slightly hard to understand. Moreover, upgraded model’s appearance and added new features satisfied them the most. Secondly and more importantly, the premises of the model’s possible inter-firm implementation process need to be considered. This second research objective is delivered in two consecutive steps. At first, a bipartite open-books supported implementation framework is created and its different characteristics discussed in theory. Afterwards, the prerequisites and the pitfalls of increasing inter-organizational information transparency are studied in empirical context. One of the main findings was that the organizations are not yet prepared for network-wide information disclosure as dyadic collaboration was favored instead. However, they would be willing to share information bilaterally at least. Another major result was that the present state of companies’ cost accounting systems will definitely need implementation-wise enhancing in future since accurate and sufficiently detailed maintenance data is not available. Further, it will also be crucial to create supporting and mutually agreed network infrastructure. There are hardly any collaborative models, methods or tools currently in usage. Lastly, the essential questions about mutual trust and predominant purchasing strategies are cooperation-wise important. If inter-organizational activities are expanded, a more relational approach should be favored in this regard. Mutual trust was also recognized as a significant cooperation factor, but it is hard to measure in reality.

Rehtori yrittäjyyskasvatuksen toimijana

Rehtoreiden roolista opetuksen ja oppilaitoksen johtajana löytyy tutkimustietoa mutta heidän roolistaan yrittäjyyskasvatuksen toimijana ei juurikaan tiedetä. Tämän tutkimuksen tavoitteena on selvittää rehtoreiden tämänhetkinen toiminta yrittäjyyskasvatuksen kehittämisen näkökulmasta Työssä tarkasteltiin rehtoreiden toimintaa yrittäjyyskasvatuksessa yrittäjämäisen työilmapiirin luomisen, yrittäjyyskasvatuksen kehittämisen ja arvioinnin, sekä koulun käytäntöjen ja verkostoyhteistyön kannalta. Työssä selvitettiin kuinka taustatekijät vaikuttavat rehtorin toimintaan yrittäjyyskasvattajana sekä millaisia vaikuttavuussuhteita rehtoreiden johtamiskäytännöillä on koulun yrittäjyyskasvatuksen käytäntöihin. Työ tehtiin kvantitatiivisena tutkimuksena, jonka empiirinen osuus toteutettiin verkkokyselylomakkeella Yrittäjyyskasvatuksen mittariston™ avulla. Tutkimuksen aineisto käsittää 97 perus- ja toisen asteen koulun rehtorin vastausta. Tutkimustulosten perusteella rehtoreiden taustaan liittyvillä muuttujilla on vaiku-tusta heidän toimintaansa yrittäjyyskasvattajina. Erityisesti rehtorin liike-elämän kokemus, yrittäjyyskokemus ja yrittäjyyskasvatusaiheisiin koulutuksiin osallis-tuminen vaikuttivat rehtorin yrittäjyyskasvatuksen toimintaa lisäävästi. Lisäksi rehtoreiden kehittämistoimilla on vaikutusta yrittäjyyskasvatuksen käytäntöjen näkymiseen oppilaitoksessa ja verkostoyhteistyöhön oppilaitoksen ulkopuolisten toimijoiden kanssa. Yrittäjyyskasvatuksen kehittämisen näkökulmasta rehtoreiden työelämätietou-teen ja kehittämistyöhön aktivoimiseen tulisikin kiinnittää huomioita, esimerkiksi täydennyskoulutusten avulla. Rehtoreiden aktiivinen toiminta alueellisesti tai paikallisesti yrittäjyyskasvatuksen kehittämisessä johtaa oppilaitoksen käytäntö-jen valikoiman laajentumiseen ja verkostoyhteistyön lisääntymiseen

Developing of Supportive Context for Eco-Industrial Networks in Finland

The aim of the present thesis was to explore possible promotional actions to support the emergence of eco-industrial business networks in Finland. The main objectives were to investigate what kind of factors affect in the development of eco-industrial networks and further make suggestions in what kinds of actions this could be supported. In addition, since the active facilitation was discovered as one potential promoting activity, further investigation about facilitation process in Finnish context was conducted and also main characteristics of nationwide facilitation programme were identified. This thesis contains literature review of network orchestration and eco-industrial networks. The latter consists of green supply chain management and industrial symbiosis, although the main focus of the study leans on the concept of industrial symbiosis. The empirical data of the study was obtained from semi-structured expert interviews. These interviews were analyzed using qualitative content analysis. The study identified four main promotional activities for eco-industrial networks: 1) building awareness, 2) incentives, 3) dismantling of legislative barriers and 4) active facilitation. In addition, a framework for facilitation activities in Finnish context was built and main characteristics of nationwide facilitation programme were identified.

Forecasting of wind speeds and directions with artificial neural networks

In this master’s thesis, wind speeds and directions were modeled with the aim of developing suitable models for hourly, daily, weekly and monthly forecasting. Artificial Neural Networks implemented in MATLAB software were used to perform the forecasts. Three main types of artificial neural network were built, namely: Feed forward neural networks, Jordan Elman neural networks and Cascade forward neural networks. Four sub models of each of these neural networks were also built, corresponding to the four forecast horizons, for both wind speeds and directions. A single neural network topology was used for each of the forecast horizons, regardless of the model type. All the models were then trained with real data of wind speeds and directions collected over a period of two years in the municipal region of Puumala in Finland. Only 70% of the data was used for training, validation and testing of the models, while the second last 15% of the data was presented to the trained models for verification. The model outputs were then compared to the last 15% of the original data, by measuring the mean square errors and sum square errors between them. Based on the results, the feed forward networks returned the lowest generalization errors for hourly, weekly and monthly forecasts of wind speeds; Jordan Elman networks returned the lowest errors when used for forecasting of daily wind speeds. Cascade forward networks gave the lowest errors when used for forecasting daily, weekly and monthly wind directions; Jordan Elman networks returned the lowest errors when used for hourly forecasting. The errors were relatively low during training of the models, but shot up upon simulation with new inputs. In addition, a combination of hyperbolic tangent transfer functions for both hidden and output layers returned better results compared to other combinations of transfer functions. In general, wind speeds were more predictable as compared to wind directions, opening up opportunities for further research into building better models for wind direction forecasting.

Aligning Regional Repository Networks

Presentation at Open Repositories 2014, Helsinki, Finland, June 9-13, 2014