Establishing trust in hybrid cloud computing environments

Establishing trust for resource sharing and collaboration has become an important issue in distributed computing environment. In this paper, we investigate the problem of establishing trust in hybrid cloud computing environments. As the scope of federated cloud computing enlarges to ubiquitous and pervasive computing, there will be a need to assess and maintain the trustworthiness of the cloud computing entities. We present a fully distributed framework that enable trust-based cloud customer and cloud service provider interactions. The framework aids a service consumer in assigning an appropriate weight to the feedback of different raters regarding a prospective service provider. Based on the framework, we developed a mechanism for controlling falsified feedback ratings from iteratively exerting trust level contamination due to falsified feedback ratings. The experimental analysis shows that the proposed framework successfully dilutes the effects of falsified feedback ratings, thereby facilitating accurate and fair assessment of the service reputations.

Understanding the conditions of trust in the ALT and AMT relationships in project alliancing

This research also aims to develop a robust trust framework which can improve the understanding of the theory to support trust in alliancing, in particular the ALT and AMT relationship to improve project success factors. Research in trust within the construction industry has not yet examined how the relational signals within the five situations in the normative framework identified by Siegwart Lindenberg affect the level of trustworthiness between partners. More research is necessary to explore potential frameworks that can be used as the basis for future research in trust. Data from previous research in the performance of alliance has been used to verify the proposed framework. The framework will be developed in the ALT and AMT relationship to improve project success factors within the alliance. The originality of this research is trying to understand trust in the context of project alliancing in Australia as there are an increasing number of construction projects using the alliancing procurement method. Additionally, this research is examining the conditions of trust from the ALT and AMT teams specifically formed for the collaboration of project alliancing.

Prediction intervals to account for uncertainties in travel time prediction

The accurate prediction of travel times is desirable but frequently prone to error. This is mainly attributable to both the underlying traffic processes and the data that are used to infer travel time. A more meaningful and pragmatic approach is to view travel time prediction as a probabilistic inference and to construct prediction intervals (PIs), which cover the range of probable travel times travelers may encounter. This paper introduces the delta and Bayesian techniques for the construction of PIs. Quantitative measures are developed and applied for a comprehensive assessment of the constructed PIs. These measures simultaneously address two important aspects of PIs: 1) coverage probability and 2) length. The Bayesian and delta methods are used to construct PIs for the neural network (NN) point forecasts of bus and freeway travel time data sets. The obtained results indicate that the delta technique outperforms the Bayesian technique in terms of narrowness of PIs with satisfactory coverage probability. In contrast, PIs constructed using the Bayesian technique are more robust against the NN structure and exhibit excellent coverage probability.

Trust mechanisms in wireless sensor networks : attack analysis and countermeasures

As the trust issue in wireless sensor networks is emerging as one important factor in security schemes, it is necessary to analyze how to resist attacks with a trust scheme. In this paper we categorize various types of attacks and countermeasures related to trust schemes in WSNs. Furthermore, we provide the development of trust mechanisms, give a short summarization of classical trust methodologies and emphasize the challenges of trust scheme in WSNs. An extensive literature survey is presented by summarizing state-of-the-art trust mechanisms in two categories: secure routing and secure data. Based on the analysis of attacks and the existing research, an open field and future direction with trust mechanisms in WSNs is provided.

Reduced food access due to a lack of money, inability to lift and lack of access to a car for food shopping : a multilevel study in Melbourne, Victoria

Objective: To describe associations between demographic and individual and arealevel socio-economic variables and restricted household food access due to lack of money, inability to lift groceries and lack of access to a car to do food shopping.
Design: Multilevel study of three measures of restricted food access, i.e. running out of money to buy food, inability to lift groceries and lack of access to a car for food shopping. Multilevel logistic regression was conducted to examine the risk of each of these outcomes according to demographic and socio-economic variables.
Setting: Random selection of households from fifty small areas in Melbourne, Australia, in 2003.
Subjects: The main food shoppers in each household (n 2564).
Results: A lack of money was significantly more likely among the young and in households with single adults. Difficultly lifting was more likely among the elderly and those born overseas. The youngest and highest age groups both reported reduced car access, as did those born overseas and single-adult households. All three factors were most likely among those with a lower individual or household socio-economic position. Increased levels of area disadvantage were independently associated with difficultly lifting and reduced car access.
Conclusions: In Melbourne, households with lower individual socio-economic position and area disadvantage have restricted access to food because of a lack of money and/or having physical limitations due difficulty lifting or lack of access to a car for food shopping. Further research is required to explore the relationship between physical restrictions and food access.

Augmenting trust establishment in dynamic systems with social networks

Social networking has recently flourished in popularity through the use of social websites. Pervasive computing resources have allowed people stay well-connected to each other through access to social networking resources. We take the position that utilizing information produced by relationships within social networks can assist in the establishment of trust for other pervasive computing applications. Furthermore, we describe how such a system can augment a sensor infrastructure used for event observation with information from mobile sensors (ie, mobile phones with cameras) controlled by potentially untrusted third parties.

Psychosocial antecedents of communication, trust, and relationship effectiveness in new product development projects : a functional manager perspective

The basic differences between marketing managers and their technically trained counterpart managers [e.g., research and development (R&D), engineering, and manufacturing managers] in terms of work experience, training, and differing decision-making styles have often been suggested as a source of conflict, which acts as a barrier to effective working relationships and integration during new product development (NPD) work. In this paper, we empirically explore this issue by developing and testing a model of psychosocial differences (thought worlds and psychological distance) between the two groups of managers and their effect on communication, trust, and relationship effectiveness during NPD projects. We find that while thought world differences do still matter, it was from a marketing perspective that they had a stronger effect. These findings have implications for top management trying to manage the functional manager interface during NPD projects. We propose a semi-formalized approach to relationship building that may speed up the acquisition of social data that is often necessary to elevate working relationships to trusting ones and improve the efficiency of NPD work. Our model is tested using data from two samples, 184 technically trained managers and 145 marketing managers from Australian companies involved in NPD work.

A novel trust measurement method based on certified belief in strength for a multi-agent classifier system

A novel trust measurement method, namely, certified belief in strength (CBS), for a multi-agent classifier system (MACS) is proposed in this paper. The CBS method aims to improve the performance of the constituent agents of the MACS, viz., the fuzzy min-max (FMM) neural network classifier. Trust measurement is accomplished using reputation and strength of the constituent agents. Trust is built from strong elements that are associated with the FMM agents, allowing the CBS method to improve the performance of the MACS. An auction procedure based on the sealed bid, namely, the first price method, is adopted for the MACS in determining the winning agent. The effectiveness of the CBS method and the bond (based on trust) is verified by using a number of benchmark data sets. The results demonstrate that the proposed MACS-CBS model is able to produce better accuracy and stability as compared with those from other existing methods. © 2012 Springer-Verlag London.

The soft systems approach to understanding trust in alliances in Australia

Alliances are complex projects with high levels of risk and uncertainty. Despite the pain share and gain share commercial arrangement in alliances, Trust is still an issue between the Alliancing Leadership Team (ALT) and Alliancing Management Team relationship (AMT). Although the concept and components of trust have been discussed by various researchers, the characteristic of trust under different situations has not been tested within the procurement research domain. Based on semi-structured interviews with the members of the ALT and AMT of an alliance project in Australia the underlying trust based relationships between the AMT and ALT were investigated using the Soft Systems Methodology (SSM). Results demonstrate that cognitive, affect, system and cognitive-affect based trust are mediated by common good, needs, sharing, breach temptation and mishap situations. This research demonstrates that the adversarial culture of the Australian construction industry cannot be changed by the implementation of trust principles alone. The culture of suspicion dominating the ideological view of the construction industry requires organizational learning between alliance parties to execute appropriate behaviours, aligned with the alliancing philosophy, to effectively achieve ideal collaboration.