I wonder what Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck will have to say about RFID... ;-)
Showing posts with label conference. Show all posts
Showing posts with label conference. Show all posts
2009-03-26
2009-01-10
My first official paper reviews
I've been invited to review some papers for a major conference in my research area. I did it gladly, after all, peer-reviewing is the cornerstone of the scientific process.
I became a user of the EDAS Conference Manager and I can say it's a very competent knowledge work system. Not very flashy, but helps a lot in getting the job done.
The review form is very concise and provides guidance when writing a review.
--
Familiarity: Expert, Familiar, Some knowledge, Novice
Presentation: Well written and understandable, Mostly well written and understandable, Understandable but needs improvement, Difficult to follow poorly written or organized
Recommendation: Strong accept, Weak accept, Weak reject, Strong reject
Contribution: What are the major issues addressed in this paper? What are the main contributions? Are these important and relevant for the conference?
Strength: What is the strength of the paper? What would be major reasons to consider this paper for inclusion in the program? (1-3 sentences)
Weakness: What are the weak points in this paper? What would be the major reasons NOT to include this paper in the program? (1-3 sentences)
Detailed Comments: Please provide detailed feedback on technical quality and presentation to help the Program Committee assess the paper and to help the authors improve their paper.
Comments to the Program Committee: These comments will be seen ONLY by the Program Committee Members (not by the authors)
I became a user of the EDAS Conference Manager and I can say it's a very competent knowledge work system. Not very flashy, but helps a lot in getting the job done.
The review form is very concise and provides guidance when writing a review.
--
Familiarity: Expert, Familiar, Some knowledge, Novice
Presentation: Well written and understandable, Mostly well written and understandable, Understandable but needs improvement, Difficult to follow poorly written or organized
Recommendation: Strong accept, Weak accept, Weak reject, Strong reject
Contribution: What are the major issues addressed in this paper? What are the main contributions? Are these important and relevant for the conference?
Strength: What is the strength of the paper? What would be major reasons to consider this paper for inclusion in the program? (1-3 sentences)
Weakness: What are the weak points in this paper? What would be the major reasons NOT to include this paper in the program? (1-3 sentences)
Detailed Comments: Please provide detailed feedback on technical quality and presentation to help the Program Committee assess the paper and to help the authors improve their paper.
Comments to the Program Committee: These comments will be seen ONLY by the Program Committee Members (not by the authors)
2008-11-15
SAPO Codebits 2008
SAPO Codebits, a Google Summer of Code-style gathering of programmers, in Portugal.
As for ideas, it's better to have crazy ones rather than few! / No que toca a ideias, antes loucas que poucas!
However there are some elements of geek culture I don't like very much, like the likening of people to machines, that can also be chemically hacked. It's a way to objectify i.e. treat as an object. A little bit doesn't hurt, as long as things are kept under control, and you don't forget a person is much more than the sum of its "parts".
As for ideas, it's better to have crazy ones rather than few! / No que toca a ideias, antes loucas que poucas!However there are some elements of geek culture I don't like very much, like the likening of people to machines, that can also be chemically hacked. It's a way to objectify i.e. treat as an object. A little bit doesn't hurt, as long as things are kept under control, and you don't forget a person is much more than the sum of its "parts".
2007-11-22
On RFID - part 5 (final)
(and last, but not least... In my opinion the best of all the talks I attended at the conference)
Closing session
The speaker of the closing session was Sanjay Sarma from MIT.
He started by presenting a RFID system's functional stack of today, composed of the following layers: tags, readers, middleware, real-time business processes and ERP (Enterprise Resources Planning). Each company has such a system. When it wants to cooperate with a partner company, it uses EPCIS.
Next he discussed what to do when preparing for tomorrow. There are several topics: security, different types of tags, different data acquisition means, new data types, new real-time business processes, new database requirements, new business processes and new exchange mechanisms.
Low-cost RFID is a constant struggle where you can choose, at best, two of the following: cost, range, functionality.
Regarding security, we have requirements for tag authentication, reader authentication and protection from eavesdropping. The latter two require encryption. Cheap and secure tags are, at least, 5 years away, because we need a new class of technologies, like: digital fingerprinting of integrated circuit on tag, read/write fingerprint at manufacturing and verification on demand.
Sensors need power, so new research is looking for power scavenged from vibrations.
Actuators will also be possible, i.e. tags that change state (1 bit) on their code. This can be a cheap communication medium for remote control.
Beyond passive RFID we'll takes to mapping the space with location/identification technologies like: wifi, cellular, wimax - all will live together. We'll have inexpensive radars.
Reading will expand soon, as Application Specific Readers (ASR) emerge, that are cheaper than today's generic-purpose readers, because they take out the stuff you don't need.
Also interesting is the possibility separating the power and signal from the reading process. For instance, a light bulb could power tags and a centralized reader would read the signals.
Concerning health issues, all studies so far have not shown any influence of RFID radiation on pharmaceuticals and other sensitive products.
The RFID system functional stack will have to extended for real-time business processes.
The middleware layer will deal with device management and will be able to detect events: "what", "when" and "where" (literal).
The business process layer the "where" will have to be enriched with additional context, to be meaningful to business and the "why" will also be important, to trigger actions.
The ERP layer will need a new data model, one that takes into account that mistakes are a part of RFID data. Databases will need to be self-healing i.e. correct themselves using basic models of behavior and of the physical world (e.g. "one missing read doesn't mean much in a warehouse stacked with products..."). Databases will also have to act more like streams and less like batches to handle the voluminous data.
RFID will enable new business processes but it's important that the "tail not wag the dog" meaning that business needs should drive RFID and not the other way around...
RFID will enable dynamic, real-time, reactive systems with the ability of just-in-time focus. Discovery will have to accept high-level commands like "Where has this object been?" and "Who damaged it?" with lots of inter company logic. This ability to "touch the physical world" will allow for the invention of new business processes.
In his final remark, Mr. Sarma recommended that "don't paint yourself into a corner" meaning don't limit your future options. As an analogy, he said that we compare the Internet of 2005 with the Internet of today!
Closing speech of the Portuguese Presidency
Bráz Costa from IAPMEI in representation of the Portuguese Minister of Economy and Innovation, talked about the European paradox: good research but bad economic valuation of knowledge. The current Portuguese strategy follows four axis: create knowledge and companies, qualify to manage, grow by innovation and export.
Carlos Zorrinho from the Portuguese Government technological plan urged Portuguese companies to "make excellence a normal state" using their knowledge, technology and innovation, sparked by creativity, with the goal of economic valuation through problem identification and solution building. The goal is a exports-driven economy.
Afterword
This concludes my report on the “On RFID – The next step to the Internet of Things” conference and exhibition that was held atLisbon , Portugal
I would like to publicly thank the organization for giving me the opportunity to participate in the conference. I would also like to congratulate them on a job well-done!
Closing session
The speaker of the closing session was Sanjay Sarma from MIT.
He started by presenting a RFID system's functional stack of today, composed of the following layers: tags, readers, middleware, real-time business processes and ERP (Enterprise Resources Planning). Each company has such a system. When it wants to cooperate with a partner company, it uses EPCIS.
Next he discussed what to do when preparing for tomorrow. There are several topics: security, different types of tags, different data acquisition means, new data types, new real-time business processes, new database requirements, new business processes and new exchange mechanisms.
Low-cost RFID is a constant struggle where you can choose, at best, two of the following: cost, range, functionality.
Regarding security, we have requirements for tag authentication, reader authentication and protection from eavesdropping. The latter two require encryption. Cheap and secure tags are, at least, 5 years away, because we need a new class of technologies, like: digital fingerprinting of integrated circuit on tag, read/write fingerprint at manufacturing and verification on demand.
Sensors need power, so new research is looking for power scavenged from vibrations.
Actuators will also be possible, i.e. tags that change state (1 bit) on their code. This can be a cheap communication medium for remote control.
Beyond passive RFID we'll takes to mapping the space with location/identification technologies like: wifi, cellular, wimax - all will live together. We'll have inexpensive radars.
Reading will expand soon, as Application Specific Readers (ASR) emerge, that are cheaper than today's generic-purpose readers, because they take out the stuff you don't need.
Also interesting is the possibility separating the power and signal from the reading process. For instance, a light bulb could power tags and a centralized reader would read the signals.
Concerning health issues, all studies so far have not shown any influence of RFID radiation on pharmaceuticals and other sensitive products.
The RFID system functional stack will have to extended for real-time business processes.
The middleware layer will deal with device management and will be able to detect events: "what", "when" and "where" (literal).
The business process layer the "where" will have to be enriched with additional context, to be meaningful to business and the "why" will also be important, to trigger actions.
The ERP layer will need a new data model, one that takes into account that mistakes are a part of RFID data. Databases will need to be self-healing i.e. correct themselves using basic models of behavior and of the physical world (e.g. "one missing read doesn't mean much in a warehouse stacked with products..."). Databases will also have to act more like streams and less like batches to handle the voluminous data.
RFID will enable new business processes but it's important that the "tail not wag the dog" meaning that business needs should drive RFID and not the other way around...
RFID will enable dynamic, real-time, reactive systems with the ability of just-in-time focus. Discovery will have to accept high-level commands like "Where has this object been?" and "Who damaged it?" with lots of inter company logic. This ability to "touch the physical world" will allow for the invention of new business processes.
In his final remark, Mr. Sarma recommended that "don't paint yourself into a corner" meaning don't limit your future options. As an analogy, he said that we compare the Internet of 2005 with the Internet of today!
Closing speech of the Portuguese Presidency
Bráz Costa from IAPMEI in representation of the Portuguese Minister of Economy and Innovation, talked about the European paradox: good research but bad economic valuation of knowledge. The current Portuguese strategy follows four axis: create knowledge and companies, qualify to manage, grow by innovation and export.
Carlos Zorrinho from the Portuguese Government technological plan urged Portuguese companies to "make excellence a normal state" using their knowledge, technology and innovation, sparked by creativity, with the goal of economic valuation through problem identification and solution building. The goal is a exports-driven economy.
Afterword
This concludes my report on the “On RFID – The next step to the Internet of Things” conference and exhibition that was held at
I would like to publicly thank the organization for giving me the opportunity to participate in the conference. I would also like to congratulate them on a job well-done!
On RFID - part 4
Day two
Governance of Resources
Bernard Benhamou from the Political Science Institute of Paris presented a "European governance perspective on the ONS". As ONS relies on DNS, the US governance dominance of DNS raises sovereignty issues for other countries. Mr. Benhamou would prefer a multi-lateral, democratic alternative. Mr. Lathia, from the audience, added that the DNS root is comparable to atomic weapons: just having them causes tensions.
Chris Adcock from EPCglobal presented a user-driven perspective to standardization. First he characterized EPCglobal has a neutral, not-for-profit organization with a board of governors composed of 19 individuals representing multiple companies, 9 nationalities (recently including China) and about 100 work groups on standards. The current key challenge of EPCglobal is driving adoption and implementation. EPCglobal's view is that standards govern interfaces, not implementations. EPC standards can be classified in three categories: physical object exchange (air interface protocols), infrastructure (reader protocol, reader management, filtering & collection) and (ALE) and data exchange (enables discovery and sharing of business information, with security authorization, authentication and entitlement mechanisms). The exchange data are EPC events that contain: what, where (location), when (time), why (business process step). ONS is a look-up service and a directory of EPC manager members. Many ONS can coexist as long as they interoperate (entails some redundancy and additional costs). Answering an audience question, he stated that EPCIS doesn't require ONS.
Kiritkumar Lathia from ICT Standards Board and Nokia-Siemens networks presented "Data governance - building trust". In his opinion the fundamental problem is whom to trust in RFID data governance and the common sense solution is that proportionality is needed. The issue is complicated by cultural differences: regional (USA "let the market decide!" vs Europe/Asia "government as caretaker/protector"), generational (young people are less concerned and more willing to use) and conceptual (e.g. privacy in anglo-saxon "My home is my castle" and continental Germany in 1983 "The individual has the right to disclose or not his/her data". In Mr. Lathia's opinion, we standards for simpler, consistent and transparent data manipulation; the disclose policy is a successful approach in applications like Facebook (ex. share this data with everyone/friends/...). As a final note, Mr. Lathia added that all these issues are relevant not just because of RFID, as all information and communication technology means more data sharing and capture issues.
Walter Weigel from ETSI presented a view on "Standards - Europe and beyond". Beyond its success stories - GSM, 3G, DECT, DUB, TETRA - ETSI is expanding its surround services with a center for testing and interoperability and several PlugTests, e.g. 2nd RFID PlugTest in 2008. Mr. Weigel stated emphatically that ETSI is a must consult body, as ESO compliance is required for mentioning technologies in European directives.
Barcode's 30th anniversary
In a short ceremony, a representative of GS1 celebrated the 30th anniversary of the barcode, stating its key features as being simplicity and low-cost. According to estimates, 6% of current product prices is saved by barcodes.
Mobilizing Ideas
Carlos Zorrinho from the Portuguese Government technological plan started the session highlighting the relationship between ideas, economic growth and jobs.
Then Alves Marques introduced the session talking about the importance of lighthouse projects to know where the technology is going and how to materialize the return-on-investment (ROI). In his view, we only really learn by doing.
The first idea was presented by Elena Siri from Instituto Tumori, Milan, Italy and focused on "Blood transfusion". The project's main concerns are patient safety and the auditing of blood transfusion processes. The goals are traceability, monitoring and timely and complete communication. The first results are promising and the project will be extended to hospitals soon.
Markus Kuhn from IML Fraunhofer, Germany, presented "Components labeling for the automotive industry" with the idea of reusing spare parts in new cars. The component's lifecycle would span production, maintenance, disassembly, reconditioning, re-use. Barcodes are not suitable for this application because their resistance is insufficient. The main challenges are: part identification standard for automotive industry; universal database for different OEMs and suppliers; finding suitable tags for the application.
Octávio Lopes from IBERLOG, Portugal, presented HubNet's new logistic concepts. The idea is to make savings in traffic, inventory and delivery time with Hubs - automatic warehouses - where goods can find their way to where they are needed.
Finally, Miguel Ferrinho from Grupo Portucel Soporcel, Portugal, presented WSCOPPI (Wood Supply Chain Optimization of Pulp and Paper Industry) with the goals of automation and optimization to provide traceability from forest to final product with interoperability. A prototype will be developed, for instance, to clarify the different requirements in RFID for tree identification and RFID for wood traceability.
Closing session
(to be continued)
Governance of Resources
Bernard Benhamou from the Political Science Institute of Paris presented a "European governance perspective on the ONS". As ONS relies on DNS, the US governance dominance of DNS raises sovereignty issues for other countries. Mr. Benhamou would prefer a multi-lateral, democratic alternative. Mr. Lathia, from the audience, added that the DNS root is comparable to atomic weapons: just having them causes tensions.
Chris Adcock from EPCglobal presented a user-driven perspective to standardization. First he characterized EPCglobal has a neutral, not-for-profit organization with a board of governors composed of 19 individuals representing multiple companies, 9 nationalities (recently including China) and about 100 work groups on standards. The current key challenge of EPCglobal is driving adoption and implementation. EPCglobal's view is that standards govern interfaces, not implementations. EPC standards can be classified in three categories: physical object exchange (air interface protocols), infrastructure (reader protocol, reader management, filtering & collection) and (ALE) and data exchange (enables discovery and sharing of business information, with security authorization, authentication and entitlement mechanisms). The exchange data are EPC events that contain: what, where (location), when (time), why (business process step). ONS is a look-up service and a directory of EPC manager members. Many ONS can coexist as long as they interoperate (entails some redundancy and additional costs). Answering an audience question, he stated that EPCIS doesn't require ONS.
Kiritkumar Lathia from ICT Standards Board and Nokia-Siemens networks presented "Data governance - building trust". In his opinion the fundamental problem is whom to trust in RFID data governance and the common sense solution is that proportionality is needed. The issue is complicated by cultural differences: regional (USA "let the market decide!" vs Europe/Asia "government as caretaker/protector"), generational (young people are less concerned and more willing to use) and conceptual (e.g. privacy in anglo-saxon "My home is my castle" and continental Germany in 1983 "The individual has the right to disclose or not his/her data". In Mr. Lathia's opinion, we standards for simpler, consistent and transparent data manipulation; the disclose policy is a successful approach in applications like Facebook (ex. share this data with everyone/friends/...). As a final note, Mr. Lathia added that all these issues are relevant not just because of RFID, as all information and communication technology means more data sharing and capture issues.
Walter Weigel from ETSI presented a view on "Standards - Europe and beyond". Beyond its success stories - GSM, 3G, DECT, DUB, TETRA - ETSI is expanding its surround services with a center for testing and interoperability and several PlugTests, e.g. 2nd RFID PlugTest in 2008. Mr. Weigel stated emphatically that ETSI is a must consult body, as ESO compliance is required for mentioning technologies in European directives.
Barcode's 30th anniversary
In a short ceremony, a representative of GS1 celebrated the 30th anniversary of the barcode, stating its key features as being simplicity and low-cost. According to estimates, 6% of current product prices is saved by barcodes.
Mobilizing Ideas
Carlos Zorrinho from the Portuguese Government technological plan started the session highlighting the relationship between ideas, economic growth and jobs.
Then Alves Marques introduced the session talking about the importance of lighthouse projects to know where the technology is going and how to materialize the return-on-investment (ROI). In his view, we only really learn by doing.
The first idea was presented by Elena Siri from Instituto Tumori, Milan, Italy and focused on "Blood transfusion". The project's main concerns are patient safety and the auditing of blood transfusion processes. The goals are traceability, monitoring and timely and complete communication. The first results are promising and the project will be extended to hospitals soon.
Markus Kuhn from IML Fraunhofer, Germany, presented "Components labeling for the automotive industry" with the idea of reusing spare parts in new cars. The component's lifecycle would span production, maintenance, disassembly, reconditioning, re-use. Barcodes are not suitable for this application because their resistance is insufficient. The main challenges are: part identification standard for automotive industry; universal database for different OEMs and suppliers; finding suitable tags for the application.
Octávio Lopes from IBERLOG, Portugal, presented HubNet's new logistic concepts. The idea is to make savings in traffic, inventory and delivery time with Hubs - automatic warehouses - where goods can find their way to where they are needed.
Finally, Miguel Ferrinho from Grupo Portucel Soporcel, Portugal, presented WSCOPPI (Wood Supply Chain Optimization of Pulp and Paper Industry) with the goals of automation and optimization to provide traceability from forest to final product with interoperability. A prototype will be developed, for instance, to clarify the different requirements in RFID for tree identification and RFID for wood traceability.
Closing session
(to be continued)
2007-11-21
On RFID - part 3
Parallel sessions - Track 2 - Technology Innovation - Applied innovation
The parallel sessions were divided in 3 tracks: 2 for market drive and 1 for technology innovation. I chose to attend the technology track. The first session from this track was chaired by Fernando Videira from Vodafone and the second was chaired by Luís Magalhães from UMIC.
The first speaker of the session was Anthony Furness from AIM-UK with "RFID a blessing or curse for SMEs?". First, Mr. Furness stated the importance of SMEs (Small and Medium Enterprises - micro < style="font-weight: bold;">Michahelles from ETH Zurich who talked about "Opportunities for fighting counterfeit products". These products span multiple categories - auto-parts, pharmaceutical, aeroplane-parts, luxury goods - and currently account for 2% of international trade (USD 176M). 2/3 are produced in China. The goal of fighting counterfeit is to increase the risk profile of counterfeit players and destroy their business model. RFID technology is promising in this aspect as it gives each item a name and allows it to be tracked through the licit distribution channels. The approaches under study are: unique serial numbering, track-and-trace plausability checks (e.g. same item seen at the same time in two places), smarter tags (e.g. tamper-evident) and reliance on object specific features (e.g. like in Euro bills). Mr. Michahelles mentioned the SToP and BRIDGE projects, funded by the EU, who contribute to this fight. One of the ideas is to empower the end-user to give feedback when spotting counterfeit products. This approach is interesting, but can't be applied for all products, as sometimes consumers are not allies to providers, as they benefit from prestigious products at low prices.
Next was a presentation by Kaj Nummila from VTT about the Indisputable Key project, that deals with tracking in the forest industry: from forest to wood use (excluding paper production). They develop different kinds of tags and readers for different uses (e.g. live tree tagging). At the architecture level, they leverage the GS1 RFID and barcode standards and use a publish-subscribe event bus with papiNET and Stanford messaging technologies.
The following speaker was Alexander Zeier from Hasso Plattner Institute in Germany, who is sponsored by SAP. The talk was about "Integrating RFID data in Enterprise Business Systems". The overall idea is that better quality data can lead to better decisions. RFID enables Real World Awareness (RWA) in business processes: the ability to sense, connect, respond. This can increase automation, improve information and processes, and finally, bring business innovation. Real world examples are: smart supermarket shelves, aircraft preventive maintenance and air-ducts maintenance. However, this also brings a data avalanche e.g. according to estimates, if Walmart used item level tagging then 7 TeraBytes of data would be generated every hour. The new proposed paradigm is management by exception and insight: understanding context through a personalized dashboard; gaining insight through an analysis console; taking action through control console.
The final presentation of the session was made by Jason Burke from SAS, a pharmaceutical company. The title was "Right drug, right dose, right patient". SAS aims to tackle the medical errors problem, as it is estimated to cause more deaths than breast cancer and AIDS. So RFID for e-Pedigree (tracking) ensures the right drug is administered. For risk mitigation strategies, Mr. Bruke presented some recommendations: select appropriate technology to assure privacy; be transparent regarding RFID practices to consumers and patients; allow opt-out choices for personal information; engage consortiums of health providers to follow best practices; educate providers and patients. Finally, regarding governance models, Mr. Burke says they should focus on sensitive information without constraining innovation.
Parallel sessions - Track 2 - Technology Innovation - Future paths for innovation
The first speaker of the session was Klaus Rischmuller from ST Electronics, France. He made an excellent overview presentation of tag electronics: "Developing chips and solutions in a complex environment". The laws dictating tag evolution are: Standards (GS1, ISO), Moore's law (microelectronics), Hertz (antennas can't get much smaller than they are now) and Joule's law (limited computing with very limited energy). Tags can be more than just IDs: they can tell a "story". For this, the initial identity should be stored permanently but there should be code, protocol and data for the "story" part. There are four classes of RFID applications: 1 - simple, cheap labels; 2 - large rewritable memory with security; 3 - battery assisted; 4 - sensor and additional processing.
The next presentation was by Werner John from IZN Fraunhofer, Germany, about "Requirements of common european platform for complex RFID applications". He presented a RFID case-study at Deutsche Post. The main idea is of tags having a display with a visual representation of their internal state, readable by humans. This display is very interesting for system migration, evolution and as a fallback procedures when electronic reading is not possible. At the end of his presentation, Mr. John stressed the need for a RFID engineer certification, i.e. people with the right skills mix to develop and implement RFID-based systems.
The next presentation was by Gerd Wolfram from CERP (and from Metro Group). The title was a "Future roadmap for research projects". Mr. Wolfram presented CERP's RFID reference model that structures and describes the different RFID application areas. It is CERP's view that the application determines the technology. So within each application field, CERP work groups performed: state-of-the-art survey, vision statement, gap analysis and identified research needs. The results are 20 major research needs classified in three categories: urgent (1-3 years), mid-term (3-5 years) and long-term (> 5 years). CERP's RFID reference model is a good starting point for any RFID solutions overview and is freely accessible at their web site.
The final presentation was by Ovidiu Vermesan from SINTEF in Norway. The title was "Smart systems on tags" and presented a technology roadmap towards ubiquitous systems: from simple but extensible protocols to more complex protocols. He presented Intellisense RFID, a project that aims to abstract tag type and reader type using multi-frequency antennas, to overcome the current fragmentation of RFID technologies and to achieve unified systems. Tags have a "personality": they sense, actuate, identify, interact, interface and communicate. Their technical features are: small size, ultra low power, low cost, invisible, and autonomous. The approaches to the overall system can be: centralized (EPC-like), decentralized (smart-tag-centered) or something in between, to achieve a more efficient network infrastructure. Finally, Mr. Vermesan presented a very thorough challenges list: environment independent tags (metal, liquids); smart tag networking (tag-2-tag); advanced power supplies (fuel cells, polymer batteries); real-time localization and tracking; data security (energy efficient encryption technology); higher frequencies (enhanced positioning resolution, smaller antennas, compact mobile readers); low power, large capacity memories; communication protocols technologies (low power, bandwidth efficiency); printable electronics (polymer electronics). In the questions and answers, Mr. Vermesan mentioned his opinion that the mobile phone with integrated reader can be an entry point from the ad-hoc network into the wireless network. One final note: this presentation had very good figures, that elegantly conveyed the ideas.
Day two
(to be continued)
The parallel sessions were divided in 3 tracks: 2 for market drive and 1 for technology innovation. I chose to attend the technology track. The first session from this track was chaired by Fernando Videira from Vodafone and the second was chaired by Luís Magalhães from UMIC.
The first speaker of the session was Anthony Furness from AIM-UK with "RFID a blessing or curse for SMEs?". First, Mr. Furness stated the importance of SMEs (Small and Medium Enterprises - micro < style="font-weight: bold;">Michahelles from ETH Zurich who talked about "Opportunities for fighting counterfeit products". These products span multiple categories - auto-parts, pharmaceutical, aeroplane-parts, luxury goods - and currently account for 2% of international trade (USD 176M). 2/3 are produced in China. The goal of fighting counterfeit is to increase the risk profile of counterfeit players and destroy their business model. RFID technology is promising in this aspect as it gives each item a name and allows it to be tracked through the licit distribution channels. The approaches under study are: unique serial numbering, track-and-trace plausability checks (e.g. same item seen at the same time in two places), smarter tags (e.g. tamper-evident) and reliance on object specific features (e.g. like in Euro bills). Mr. Michahelles mentioned the SToP and BRIDGE projects, funded by the EU, who contribute to this fight. One of the ideas is to empower the end-user to give feedback when spotting counterfeit products. This approach is interesting, but can't be applied for all products, as sometimes consumers are not allies to providers, as they benefit from prestigious products at low prices.Next was a presentation by Kaj Nummila from VTT about the Indisputable Key project, that deals with tracking in the forest industry: from forest to wood use (excluding paper production). They develop different kinds of tags and readers for different uses (e.g. live tree tagging). At the architecture level, they leverage the GS1 RFID and barcode standards and use a publish-subscribe event bus with papiNET and Stanford messaging technologies.
The following speaker was Alexander Zeier from Hasso Plattner Institute in Germany, who is sponsored by SAP. The talk was about "Integrating RFID data in Enterprise Business Systems". The overall idea is that better quality data can lead to better decisions. RFID enables Real World Awareness (RWA) in business processes: the ability to sense, connect, respond. This can increase automation, improve information and processes, and finally, bring business innovation. Real world examples are: smart supermarket shelves, aircraft preventive maintenance and air-ducts maintenance. However, this also brings a data avalanche e.g. according to estimates, if Walmart used item level tagging then 7 TeraBytes of data would be generated every hour. The new proposed paradigm is management by exception and insight: understanding context through a personalized dashboard; gaining insight through an analysis console; taking action through control console.
The final presentation of the session was made by Jason Burke from SAS, a pharmaceutical company. The title was "Right drug, right dose, right patient". SAS aims to tackle the medical errors problem, as it is estimated to cause more deaths than breast cancer and AIDS. So RFID for e-Pedigree (tracking) ensures the right drug is administered. For risk mitigation strategies, Mr. Bruke presented some recommendations: select appropriate technology to assure privacy; be transparent regarding RFID practices to consumers and patients; allow opt-out choices for personal information; engage consortiums of health providers to follow best practices; educate providers and patients. Finally, regarding governance models, Mr. Burke says they should focus on sensitive information without constraining innovation.
Parallel sessions - Track 2 - Technology Innovation - Future paths for innovation
The first speaker of the session was Klaus Rischmuller from ST Electronics, France. He made an excellent overview presentation of tag electronics: "Developing chips and solutions in a complex environment". The laws dictating tag evolution are: Standards (GS1, ISO), Moore's law (microelectronics), Hertz (antennas can't get much smaller than they are now) and Joule's law (limited computing with very limited energy). Tags can be more than just IDs: they can tell a "story". For this, the initial identity should be stored permanently but there should be code, protocol and data for the "story" part. There are four classes of RFID applications: 1 - simple, cheap labels; 2 - large rewritable memory with security; 3 - battery assisted; 4 - sensor and additional processing.
The next presentation was by Werner John from IZN Fraunhofer, Germany, about "Requirements of common european platform for complex RFID applications". He presented a RFID case-study at Deutsche Post. The main idea is of tags having a display with a visual representation of their internal state, readable by humans. This display is very interesting for system migration, evolution and as a fallback procedures when electronic reading is not possible. At the end of his presentation, Mr. John stressed the need for a RFID engineer certification, i.e. people with the right skills mix to develop and implement RFID-based systems.
The next presentation was by Gerd Wolfram from CERP (and from Metro Group). The title was a "Future roadmap for research projects". Mr. Wolfram presented CERP's RFID reference model that structures and describes the different RFID application areas. It is CERP's view that the application determines the technology. So within each application field, CERP work groups performed: state-of-the-art survey, vision statement, gap analysis and identified research needs. The results are 20 major research needs classified in three categories: urgent (1-3 years), mid-term (3-5 years) and long-term (> 5 years). CERP's RFID reference model is a good starting point for any RFID solutions overview and is freely accessible at their web site.
The final presentation was by Ovidiu Vermesan from SINTEF in Norway. The title was "Smart systems on tags" and presented a technology roadmap towards ubiquitous systems: from simple but extensible protocols to more complex protocols. He presented Intellisense RFID, a project that aims to abstract tag type and reader type using multi-frequency antennas, to overcome the current fragmentation of RFID technologies and to achieve unified systems. Tags have a "personality": they sense, actuate, identify, interact, interface and communicate. Their technical features are: small size, ultra low power, low cost, invisible, and autonomous. The approaches to the overall system can be: centralized (EPC-like), decentralized (smart-tag-centered) or something in between, to achieve a more efficient network infrastructure. Finally, Mr. Vermesan presented a very thorough challenges list: environment independent tags (metal, liquids); smart tag networking (tag-2-tag); advanced power supplies (fuel cells, polymer batteries); real-time localization and tracking; data security (energy efficient encryption technology); higher frequencies (enhanced positioning resolution, smaller antennas, compact mobile readers); low power, large capacity memories; communication protocols technologies (low power, bandwidth efficiency); printable electronics (polymer electronics). In the questions and answers, Mr. Vermesan mentioned his opinion that the mobile phone with integrated reader can be an entry point from the ad-hoc network into the wireless network. One final note: this presentation had very good figures, that elegantly conveyed the ideas.
Day two
(to be continued)
On RFID - part 2
Security and privacy: Does Europe need new rules for RFID?
This session had two initial presentations and a panel discussion.
Kathryn Ratté from the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) was invited to make a presentation of the US approach to security and privacy in RFID, as the FTC is responsible for consumer protection and law enforcement in the private uses of data. They have an internal RFID group since June 2004. They try to prevent consumer harm by helping consumers help themselves through information and education, but also make sure businesses keep their promises to customers and support industry self-regulation initiatives to create meaningful accountability mechanisms. They recognize there isn't a single solution suitable for all cases, so they do a company assessment and risk analysis for each case.
Reinhard Posch from the ENISA (European Network and Information Security Agency) presented his view on the subject. He identified security, supply chain and asset tracking as the main RFID applications. He regards tag cloning as the main security threat for RFID applications and mentioned signature-generating tags as a possible solution. Other technical challenges for RFID are system scalability (billions of tags) and the management of access rights to data. He also briefly mentioned other challenges for RFID: environmental and health issues.
Next started the panel discussion moderated by the journalist Vasco Trigo. The participants were David Hoffman from Intel, Peter Hustinx from EDPS, Michael Donohue from OECD, Emilie Barrau from BEUC, Kathryn Ratté from the US FTC and Reinhard Posch from ENISA.
After attending the hour-long discussion, my notes are the following:
(to be continued)
This session had two initial presentations and a panel discussion.
Kathryn Ratté from the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) was invited to make a presentation of the US approach to security and privacy in RFID, as the FTC is responsible for consumer protection and law enforcement in the private uses of data. They have an internal RFID group since June 2004. They try to prevent consumer harm by helping consumers help themselves through information and education, but also make sure businesses keep their promises to customers and support industry self-regulation initiatives to create meaningful accountability mechanisms. They recognize there isn't a single solution suitable for all cases, so they do a company assessment and risk analysis for each case.
Reinhard Posch from the ENISA (European Network and Information Security Agency) presented his view on the subject. He identified security, supply chain and asset tracking as the main RFID applications. He regards tag cloning as the main security threat for RFID applications and mentioned signature-generating tags as a possible solution. Other technical challenges for RFID are system scalability (billions of tags) and the management of access rights to data. He also briefly mentioned other challenges for RFID: environmental and health issues.
Next started the panel discussion moderated by the journalist Vasco Trigo. The participants were David Hoffman from Intel, Peter Hustinx from EDPS, Michael Donohue from OECD, Emilie Barrau from BEUC, Kathryn Ratté from the US FTC and Reinhard Posch from ENISA.
After attending the hour-long discussion, my notes are the following:
- Surveys show that consumers have privacy and security concerns. Privacy trade-offs for consumers require information, but we have to find a clear way to state the issues. Opting out of RFID won't be a real option in many cases, as some applications will be mandatory (e.g. passport) and others won't have alternatives;
- Privacy doesn't mean the same accross the world, but there are some shared principles;
- Another inconvenient truth (reference to Al Gore's global warming alert movie) is that RFID is the infrastructure for worldwide surveillance;
- However, RFID is a suite of technologies and not all of them affect privacy. At this moment, it is important to avoid creating generic rules that can hinder potentially useful applications (e.g. upfront consent vs unconscious patient in hospital);
- Change is unavoidable in 5 year time frame. Technology misuse will happen but it won't stop technology adoption. We need reasonable solutions proportional to risk, so we need to make privacy impact assessment and to leverage PET (privacy enhancing technologies);
- People would prefer to build the security in the technology from start, but this isn't completely possible because not all problems can be anticipated;
- Regulation can act now to require minimum tag capabities, like tag kill. Only later will the problems be truly assessed and then the existing mechanisms can be used to implement solutions;
- The main distinguishing feature of RFID compared to existing technologies is the invisibility of tags and the possibility of covert reading. This is what might make current legislation obsolete.
(to be continued)
2007-11-16
On RFID
Foreword
The “On RFID – The next step to the Internet of Things” conference and exhibition was held at
The conference was organized by Link Consulting, UMIC and IAPMEI and was integrated in the Portuguese Presidency of the Council of the EU. The conference was a follow-up to a previous conference held on June 2007 in
I was fortunate to attend the event, including all plenary sessions and the technology innovation parallel sessions. Overall it was a very good conference and very well organized (with the exception of some occasional sound system issues). For my personal interest I would have liked more in-depth technical presentations, but it was still a worthwhile attendance.
Next I’ll share some of my notes with you about presentations I found interesting. Like all selections, I’m sure I left out some important things, but hopefully not too many.
Day one
Opening session
In his welcome address, Alves Marques greeted all the attendants and underlined the great public interest and participation in the conference and outlined the programme.The Portuguese Secretary of State, Manuel Heitor, made the opening address structured around the relationships of RFID with people, knowledge and ideas as key to building a common RFID framework.
Ten Hompel from IML Fraunhofer, Germany, relayed a message from the German government that mentioned the importance of preserving European interest in regard to the management of RFID data, and the necessary attention to SMEs’ (Small, Medium Enterprises) RFID adoption barriers, as SMEs are play a very important role in European innovation.
Next Mr. Hompel started his personal message with some suggestions for RFID: disseminate information and best practices; take a light approach to regulation, trusting in self-regulation; solutions are application-specific, as they always involve trade-offs.
Mr. Hompel continued with a very interesting analogy from the Physics world of the past century, comparing the two opposing approaches to understanding the Atom: Bohr’s classic physics and Einstein’s relativity. He also mentioned Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. Then he used the analogy to give his opinion on the correct approach to SCM (Supply Chain Management) systems: “Do not try to predict the unpredictable”; Production and logistics are non-deterministic and the only way to cope with this reality is using a service-oriented approach and letting service-chains come up in real-time. This approach also benefits from an agent based-approach to modeling complex, real-time systems. In my view however there has to be a special attention to exception handling and disaster scenarios in these more loosely coupled systems.
Security and Privacy: Does
2007-10-30
NWeSP 2007 review - day two
Day two of the conference started with a key note, presented by Kaori Yoshida and Mario Koeppen: "The Gestalt of Web Services". A very interesting presentation of visual aspects of web design. Unfortunately it was mostly off-topic for this conference. Maybe not if there was a standard visual representation for a set of web services and "aesthetic" metrics to "see" if the services looked good or bad (ex. too many dependencies)...
Hridesh Rajan working in Iowa State university, USA, presented the paper "How to Trust Web Services Monitor Executing in an Untrusted Environment?". It was one of the most interesting papers of the whole conference. It proposes adding hardware-based trust verification capabilities to SOA, using TPM - Trusted Platform Module - embedded in the servers' microprocessors (ex. Intel's). Only the trust monitors are bound to the server hardware TPM but not the services executing on that machine. This is an interesting approach to build a TCB - Trusted Computing Base - in a distributed system. However, there has to be a hardware registry of the servers, and a trusted procedure for the distribution of public keys when new servers are added to the infrastructure.
Another very good paper was presented by Gottfried Vossen, from Germany: "Web Service Discovery - Reality Check 2.0". The paper discusses the real world use of Web Service registries, like UDDI. The main conclusion is that UDDI may be interesting in a closed world inside an organization (especially in a single vendor environment - SAP, Microsoft, IBM, ...), but in the Internet, service discovery is mostly a human-centered process: people find out about the service and link directly to its contracts. The Universal Business Registry vision might never come true.
On a side-note, the paper also does a good Web 2.0 overview, highlighting its main principles and differences to Web 1.0.
The paper "ATHENE - An Approach for Modeling Semantic Web Processes over User-friendly and Editable Ontology Models" by Nishant Singh from India, presents a well structured approach to semantic description of services, using a user-driven process, with a three layer model. The users are developers and/or domain experts. The tiers are Meta2-model (object, types and relations), Meta-model (using OWL) and Model. There are also some user-interface abstractions - like notebook - to help the users edit the ontology.
Next, I presented my work "Core mechanisms for Web Services extensions" (in case you don't remember, I'm Miguel Pardal from Portugal's Instituto Superior Técnico). I described the core mechanisms necessary to build Web Services extensions, regardless of the underlying platform. I also mentioned the on-going work to build an extensions engine integrated in a three-layered application framework. In the Q&A, I talked about general-purpose extensions (ones that add some specific funcionality or a WS-standard implementation) and customization extensions (ones that add features to an existing capabilities). A good analogy for WS-extensions are Mozilla Firefox's extensions.
The next presentation was "A Framework for the Requirements Analysis of Service-oriented Workflows" by Jochen Muller, from Germany's University of Kaiserslautern. The paper presents a workflow definition where it is a service and is composed of (stateless) services. The methodology distinguishes between process design and enactment stages of the workflow. The workflows can be long-running, with some instances taking years. The system is focused in the e-Government domain, particularly, in the gov-to-gov interactions. In my opinion, this proposal would benefit from having an explicit account for versioning, in order to have different version workflows running side-by-side.
The final presented paper was "On The Use of Ontology Reconciliation Techniques in SOA" by Patricio de Alencar Silva, from Brazil. This work is about the Semantic Web and its automatic service discovery and binding. The paper acknowledges the fact that semantic heterogeneity is not a computational problem, but a philosophical one. It presents the existing approaches to brigde concept definitions gaps between different organizations and application domains using ontology-based techniques.
Hridesh Rajan working in Iowa State university, USA, presented the paper "How to Trust Web Services Monitor Executing in an Untrusted Environment?". It was one of the most interesting papers of the whole conference. It proposes adding hardware-based trust verification capabilities to SOA, using TPM - Trusted Platform Module - embedded in the servers' microprocessors (ex. Intel's). Only the trust monitors are bound to the server hardware TPM but not the services executing on that machine. This is an interesting approach to build a TCB - Trusted Computing Base - in a distributed system. However, there has to be a hardware registry of the servers, and a trusted procedure for the distribution of public keys when new servers are added to the infrastructure.
Another very good paper was presented by Gottfried Vossen, from Germany: "Web Service Discovery - Reality Check 2.0". The paper discusses the real world use of Web Service registries, like UDDI. The main conclusion is that UDDI may be interesting in a closed world inside an organization (especially in a single vendor environment - SAP, Microsoft, IBM, ...), but in the Internet, service discovery is mostly a human-centered process: people find out about the service and link directly to its contracts. The Universal Business Registry vision might never come true.
On a side-note, the paper also does a good Web 2.0 overview, highlighting its main principles and differences to Web 1.0.
The paper "ATHENE - An Approach for Modeling Semantic Web Processes over User-friendly and Editable Ontology Models" by Nishant Singh from India, presents a well structured approach to semantic description of services, using a user-driven process, with a three layer model. The users are developers and/or domain experts. The tiers are Meta2-model (object, types and relations), Meta-model (using OWL) and Model. There are also some user-interface abstractions - like notebook - to help the users edit the ontology.
Next, I presented my work "Core mechanisms for Web Services extensions" (in case you don't remember, I'm Miguel Pardal from Portugal's Instituto Superior Técnico). I described the core mechanisms necessary to build Web Services extensions, regardless of the underlying platform. I also mentioned the on-going work to build an extensions engine integrated in a three-layered application framework. In the Q&A, I talked about general-purpose extensions (ones that add some specific funcionality or a WS-standard implementation) and customization extensions (ones that add features to an existing capabilities). A good analogy for WS-extensions are Mozilla Firefox's extensions.
The next presentation was "A Framework for the Requirements Analysis of Service-oriented Workflows" by Jochen Muller, from Germany's University of Kaiserslautern. The paper presents a workflow definition where it is a service and is composed of (stateless) services. The methodology distinguishes between process design and enactment stages of the workflow. The workflows can be long-running, with some instances taking years. The system is focused in the e-Government domain, particularly, in the gov-to-gov interactions. In my opinion, this proposal would benefit from having an explicit account for versioning, in order to have different version workflows running side-by-side.
The final presented paper was "On The Use of Ontology Reconciliation Techniques in SOA" by Patricio de Alencar Silva, from Brazil. This work is about the Semantic Web and its automatic service discovery and binding. The paper acknowledges the fact that semantic heterogeneity is not a computational problem, but a philosophical one. It presents the existing approaches to brigde concept definitions gaps between different organizations and application domains using ontology-based techniques.
2007-10-29
NWeSP 2007 review - day one
I'm now going to present some highlights from NWeSP 2007, the 3rd International Conference on Next Generation Web Services Practices, held in Chung-Ang University, Seoul, South Korea, from October 29 to 31 , 2007.
In the opening session, Dr. Nikolay Shilov from Russia, presented the talk "Combining logics of Knowledge, Time and Actions for reasoning about Intelligent Agents". It was about the different approaches to knowledge: formal concepts analysis (FCA), description logic (DL) and other logics of knowledge. The first two are suitable to represent static facts about objects and their relations. The latter deal with uncertain and evolving environment acquisition. Dr. Shilov argues that these are the most suitable to build Semantic Web Services.
It was a good talk. My main criticism is that the present results are too distant from current Web Services applications.
The first presented paper was "A Simple Approach to Optimize Web Services Performance" by Tanakorn Wichaiwong from Thailand, about the performance improvements of using FTP transport for Web Services (WS-FTP) in an Intranet environment comparing to HTTP. Security issues were not analysed.
The next presentation was "Transforming valid XML documents into RDF via RDF schema" by Thuy Pham from Korea, about the conversion of XML-DTD data structures to RDF format, more suitable for Semantic Web, where the information is represented in triples: subject, predicate and object.
Next was "First approach to Design a Web Service Honeypot: WS-pot" by Hugo Gonzalez from Mexico. Hugo described his system that applies the honeypot approach to web services security: simulate a service and attract attackers to record how they try to compromise the service or the server machine. Promising work, especially if the real-world attacks data will be related to the effectiveness of security mechanisms provided by the WS security standards.
The next two papers were presented by Dimitru Roman, working in Austria.
The first one was "On describing and ranking services based on non-functional properties" about a description and automatic binding mechanism for Semantic Web Services. The presented work was tested with lab application. It is a gradual phased-approach to Web Services, that might be an interesting approach. Check http://www.wsmo.org/ for more information. In my view, the greatest problem is that it assumes uniform knowledge (ontology) between the cooperating organizations, which is difficult to achieve in real-world applications.
The second one was "A CTR-based Approach to Service Composition Patterns" describes the use of CTR - Concurrent Transaction Logic (only atomicity property) - to implement different workflow patterns. This paper is based on the patterns catalogue available at http://www.workflowpatterns.com/.
Next "The WINGS of jCOLIBRI: A CBR Architecture for Semantic Web Services" was video-presented by Juan A. Recio-Garcia, from Spain. CBR stands for Case-Based Reasoning and proposes a client-server binding architecture based on a history of previous interactions (cases), finding similarities with current invocation and performing some minor adjustments. The authors find limitations in their proposal that they will attempt to solve using planning techniques.
The final presentation of the first conference day was "A Framework for Measuring Performance in Service-Oriented Architecture" by Si Won Choi, from Korea. It was a very good paper about Web Service performance metrics. The main benefit of the proposed metrics is their practical measurement procedure. The metrics were obtained with a statistics collector and a performance monitor for a hotel reservations web service, built on top of the Apache ServiceMix ESB.
The most interesting poster was "Aspect Mining for Dynamic Service Orchestration" by Hao Yang, as it presented a practical application of AO4BPEL, an aspect-oriented extension for BPEL.
In the opening session, Dr. Nikolay Shilov from Russia, presented the talk "Combining logics of Knowledge, Time and Actions for reasoning about Intelligent Agents". It was about the different approaches to knowledge: formal concepts analysis (FCA), description logic (DL) and other logics of knowledge. The first two are suitable to represent static facts about objects and their relations. The latter deal with uncertain and evolving environment acquisition. Dr. Shilov argues that these are the most suitable to build Semantic Web Services.
It was a good talk. My main criticism is that the present results are too distant from current Web Services applications.
The first presented paper was "A Simple Approach to Optimize Web Services Performance" by Tanakorn Wichaiwong from Thailand, about the performance improvements of using FTP transport for Web Services (WS-FTP) in an Intranet environment comparing to HTTP. Security issues were not analysed.
The next presentation was "Transforming valid XML documents into RDF via RDF schema" by Thuy Pham from Korea, about the conversion of XML-DTD data structures to RDF format, more suitable for Semantic Web, where the information is represented in triples: subject, predicate and object.
Next was "First approach to Design a Web Service Honeypot: WS-pot" by Hugo Gonzalez from Mexico. Hugo described his system that applies the honeypot approach to web services security: simulate a service and attract attackers to record how they try to compromise the service or the server machine. Promising work, especially if the real-world attacks data will be related to the effectiveness of security mechanisms provided by the WS security standards.
The next two papers were presented by Dimitru Roman, working in Austria.
The first one was "On describing and ranking services based on non-functional properties" about a description and automatic binding mechanism for Semantic Web Services. The presented work was tested with lab application. It is a gradual phased-approach to Web Services, that might be an interesting approach. Check http://www.wsmo.org/ for more information. In my view, the greatest problem is that it assumes uniform knowledge (ontology) between the cooperating organizations, which is difficult to achieve in real-world applications.
The second one was "A CTR-based Approach to Service Composition Patterns" describes the use of CTR - Concurrent Transaction Logic (only atomicity property) - to implement different workflow patterns. This paper is based on the patterns catalogue available at http://www.workflowpatterns.com/.
Next "The WINGS of jCOLIBRI: A CBR Architecture for Semantic Web Services" was video-presented by Juan A. Recio-Garcia, from Spain. CBR stands for Case-Based Reasoning and proposes a client-server binding architecture based on a history of previous interactions (cases), finding similarities with current invocation and performing some minor adjustments. The authors find limitations in their proposal that they will attempt to solve using planning techniques.
The final presentation of the first conference day was "A Framework for Measuring Performance in Service-Oriented Architecture" by Si Won Choi, from Korea. It was a very good paper about Web Service performance metrics. The main benefit of the proposed metrics is their practical measurement procedure. The metrics were obtained with a statistics collector and a performance monitor for a hotel reservations web service, built on top of the Apache ServiceMix ESB.
The most interesting poster was "Aspect Mining for Dynamic Service Orchestration" by Hao Yang, as it presented a practical application of AO4BPEL, an aspect-oriented extension for BPEL.
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