Search Results (2,312)

The rapid proliferation of artificial intelligence (AI) across various industries presents both opportunities and challenges, particularly concerning personal data privacy. With the enforcement of regulations like Thailand’s Personal Data Protection Act (PDPA), organizations face increasing pressure to protect sensitive information found in diverse data sources, including product and shipping labels. These labels, often processed by AI systems for logistics and inventory management, frequently contain Personally Identifiable Information (PII). This paper introduces a novel AI-driven system for automated PII redaction on label images, specifically designed to facilitate PDPA compliance. Our system employs a two-stage pipeline: (1) text extraction using a combination of EasyOCR and Tesseract OCR engines, maximizing recall for both Thai and English text; and (2) intelligent redaction using a pre-trained large language model (LLM), Qwen (Qwen/Qwen2.5-72B-Instruct-AWQ), prompted to identify and classify text segments as PII or non-PII based on simplified PDPA guidelines. Identified PII is then automatically redacted via black masking. We evaluated our system on a dataset of 100 drug label images, achieving a redaction precision of 92.5%, a recall of 83.2%, and an F1-score of 87.6%, with an over-redaction rate of 3.1%. These results demonstrate the system’s effectiveness in accurately redacting PII while preserving the utility of non-sensitive label information. This research contributes a practical, scalable solution for automated PDPA compliance in AI-driven label processing, mitigating privacy risks and promoting responsible AI adoption. Full article

The Internet Protocol (IP) uses numerical address values carried in IP packets at the network layer to allow correct forwarding of packets between source and destination. Those address values must be kept visible in all parts of the network. By definition, those addresses must carry enough information to identify the source and destination for the communication. This means that successive flows of IP packets can be correlated—it is possible for an observer of the flows to easily link them to an individual source and so, potentially, to an individual user. To alleviate this privacy concern, it is desirable to have ephemeral address values—values that have a limited lifespan and so make flow correlation more difficult for an attacker. However, the IP address is also used in the end-to-end communication state for transport layer flows so must remain consistent to allow correct operation at the transport layer. We present a solution to this tension in requirements by the use of ephemeral Node Identifier (eNID) values in IP packets as part of the address value. We have implemented our approach as an extension to IPv6 in the FreeBSD14 operating system kernel. We have evaluated the implementation with existing applications over both a testbed network in a controlled environment, as well as with global IPv6 network connectivity. Our results show that eNIDs work with existing applications and over existing IPv6 networks. Our analyses shows that using eNIDs creates a disruption to the correlation of flows and so effectively perturbs linkability. As our approach is a network layer (layer 3) mechanism, it is usable by any transport layer (layer 4) protocol, improving privacy for all applications and all users. Full article

Traditional horticultural information systems lack fine-grained, transparent on-farm event traceability, often providing only high-level post-harvest summaries. These systems also fail to standardise and integrate diverse data sources, ensure data privacy, and scale effectively to meet the demands of modern agriculture. Concurrently, rising requirements for global environmental, social, and governance (ESG) compliance, notably Scope 3 emissions reporting, are driving the need for farm-level visibility. To address these gaps, this study proposes a novel traceability framework tailored to horticulture, leveraging global data standards. The system captures key on-farm events (e.g., irrigation, harvesting, and chemical applications) at varied resolutions, using decentralised identification, secure data-sharing protocols, and farmer-controlled access. Built on a progressive Web application with microservice-enabled cloud infrastructure, the platform integrates dynamic APIs and digital links to connect on-farm operations and external supply chains, resolving farm-level data bottlenecks. Initial testing on Victorian farms demonstrates its scalability potential. Pilot studies further validate its on-farm interoperability and support for sustainability claims through digitally verifiable credentials for an international horticultural export case study. The system also provides a tested baseline for integrating data to and from emerging technologies, such as farm robotics and digital twins, with potential for broader application across agricultural commodities. Full article

The rapid growth of Internet of Things (IoT) devices across industrial and critical sectors requires robust and efficient authentication mechanisms. Traditional authentication systems struggle to balance security, privacy and computational efficiency, particularly in resource-constrained environments such as Industry 4.0. This research presents the SmartIoT Hybrid Machine Learning (ML) Model, a novel integration of Attribute-Based Authentication and a lightweight machine learning algorithm designed to enhance security while minimising computational overhead. The SmartIoT Hybrid ML Model utilises Random Forest classifiers for real-time anomaly detection, dynamically assessing access requests based on user attributes, login patterns and behavioural analysis. The model enhances identity protection while enabling secure authentication without exposing sensitive information by incorporating privacy-preserving Attribute-Based Credentials and Attribute-Based Signatures. Our experimental evaluation demonstrates 86% authentication accuracy, 88% precision and 96% recall, significantly outperforming existing solutions while maintaining an average response time of 112ms, making it suitable for low-power IoT devices. Comparative analysis with state-of-the-art authentication frameworks shows the model’s security resilience, computational efficiency and adaptability in real-world IoT applications. Full article

During substation inspection, operators are often exposed to hazardous working environments. It is necessary to use visual sensors to determine work status and perform action detection to distinguish between normal and dangerous actions in order to ensure the safety of operators. However, due to information security, privacy protection, and the rarity of dangerous scenarios, there is a scarcity of related visual action datasets. To address this issue, this study first introduces a virtual work platform, which includes a controller for the parameterized control of scenarios and human resources. It can simulate realistic substation inspection operations and generate synthetic action datasets using domain randomization and behavior tree logic. Subsequently, a spatiotemporal action detection algorithm is utilized for action detection, employing YOLOv8 as the human detector, Vision Transformer as the backbone network, and SlowFast as the action detection architecture. Model training is conducted using three datasets: a real dataset, a synthetic dataset generated via a VWP, and a mixed dataset comprising both real and synthetic data. Finally, using the model trained on the real dataset as a baseline, the evaluation results on the test set shows that the use of synthetic datasets in training improves the model’s average precision by up to 10.7%, with a maximum average precision of 73.61%. This demonstrates the feasibility, effectiveness, and robustness of synthetic data. Full article

Scarcity of data is one of the major challenges in developing automatic computer-aided diagnosis systems, training radiologists and supporting medical research. One solution toward this is community cloud storage, which can be utilized by organizations with a common interest as a shared data repository for joint projects and collaboration. In this large database, relevant images are often searched by an image retrieval system, for which the computation and storage capabilities of a cloud server can bring the benefits of high scalability and availability. However, the main limitation in availing third party-provided services comes from the associated privacy concerns during data transmission, storage and computation. To ensure privacy, this study implements a content-based image retrieval application for finding different types of brain tumors in the encrypted domain. In this framework, we propose a perceptual encryption technique to protect images in such a way that the features necessary for high-dimensional representation can still be extracted from the cipher images. Also, it allows data protection on the client side; therefore, the server stores and receives images in an encrypted form and has no access to the secret key information. Experimental results show that compared with conventional secure techniques, our proposed system reduced the difference in non-secure and secure retrieval performance by up to 3%. Full article

In recent years, novel technologies in smart healthcare systems have opened significant opportunities for diagnosis and treatment across various medical fields. Federated Learning (FL), a decentralized machine learning approach, trains shared models using local data from devices like wearables and hospital systems without transferring sensitive information, offering a promising solution to privacy challenges in areas such as cancer prediction, COVID-19 detection, drug discovery, and medical image processing. This literature survey reviews FL architectures (e.g., FedHealth, PerFit), applications, and recent advancements, demonstrating their impact on healthcare through enhanced predictive models for patient care. Key findings include improved accuracy in wearable-based diagnostics and secure multi-institutional collaboration, though limitations persist. We also highlight open challenges, such as security risks, communication costs, and data heterogeneity, which require further research attention. Full article

Crop diseases can significantly impact crop growth and production, often leading to a severe economic burden for rice farmers. These diseases can spread rapidly over large areas, making it challenging for farmers to detect and manage them effectively and promptly. Automated methods for disease classification emerge as promising approaches for detecting and managing these diseases, provided there are sufficient data. Sharing data among farms could facilitate the development of a strong classifier, but it must be executed properly to prevent leaking sensitive information. In this study, we demonstrate how farms with vastly different datasets can collaborate through a federated learning model. The objective of this collaboration is to create a classifier that every farm can use to detect and manage rice crop diseases by leveraging data sharing while safeguarding data privacy. We underscore the significance of data sharing and model architecture in developing a robust centralized classifier, which can effectively classify multiple diseases (and a healthy state) with 83.24% accuracy, 84.24% precision, 83.24% recall, and an 82.28% F1 score. In addition, we demonstrate the importance of model design on classification outcomes. The proposed collaborative learning method not only preserves data privacy but also offers a cost-effective and communication-efficient lightweight solution for rice crop disease detection. Furthermore, this collaborative strategy can be extended to other crop disease classification tasks. Full article

The Internet of Things (IoT) is transforming how organisations and individuals connect and interact with digital ecosystems, especially in sectors like healthcare and banking. While technological benefits have been widely discussed, the societal and organisational impacts of IoT adoption remain underexplored. This study aims to address this gap by conducting a systematic literature review (SLR) of 110 peer-reviewed publications from 2012 to 2024 across four major academic databases. The review identifies and categorises the key applications of IoT, its social and organisational drivers, and the challenges of its implementation within the healthcare and banking sectors. The analysis reveals that critical barriers to IoT adoption include security, privacy, interoperability, and legal compliance, alongside concerns around workforce displacement and trust. This study also introduces the 5Cs framework—connectivity, continuity, compliance, coexistence, and cybersecurity—as a practical lens for addressing these challenges. The findings highlight the need for responsible IoT integration that balances innovation with ethical, social, and organisational accountability. Implications of this research inform policymakers, practitioners, and researchers on how to design human-centric and socially sustainable IoT strategies in sensitive sectors. Full article

Origin–destination (OD) flows are essential for urban studies, yet their acquisition is often hampered by high costs and privacy constraints. Prevailing inference methodologies inadequately address latent spatial dependencies between non-contiguous and distant areas, which are useful for understanding modern transportation systems with expanding regional interactions. To address these challenges, this paper propose a hybrid learning model with the Global–Local Graph Attention Network and XGBoost (GLGAT-XG) to infer OD flows from both global and local geographic contextual information. First, we represent the study area as an undirected weighted graph. Second, we design the GLGAT to encode spatial correlation and urban feature information into the embeddings within a multitask setup. Specifically, the GLGAT employs a graph transformer to capture global spatial correlations and a graph attention network to extract local spatial correlations followed by weighted fusion to ensure validity. Finally, OD flow inference is performed by XGBoost based on the GLGAT-generated embeddings. The experimental results of multiple real-world datasets demonstrate an 8% improvement in RMSE, 7% in MAE, and 10% in CPC over baselines. Additionally, we produce a multi-scale OD dataset in Xian, China, to further reveal spatial-scale effects. This research builds on existing OD flow inference methodologies and offers significant practical implications for urban planning and sustainable development. Full article

With rapid urbanization exacerbating the challenges in resource allocation, environmental sustainability, and infrastructure management, City Information Modeling (CIM) has emerged as an indispensable digital solution for smart city development. CIM represents an advanced urban management paradigm that integrates Geographic Information Systems (GISs), Building Information Modeling (BIM), and the Internet of Things (IoT) to establish a multidimensional digital framework for comprehensive urban data management and intelligent decision making. While the existing research has primarily focused on technical architectures, governance models, and application scenarios, a systematic exploration of CIM’s data-driven characteristics remains limited. This paper reviews the evolution of CIM from a data-centric view introducing a research framework that systematically examines the data lifecycle, including acquisition, processing, analysis, and decision support. Furthermore, it explores the application of CIM in key areas such as smart transportation and digital twin cities, emphasizing its deep integration with big data, artificial intelligence (AI), and cloud computing to enhance urban governance and intelligent services. Despite its advancements, CIM faces critical challenges, including data security, privacy protection, and cross-sectoral data sharing. This survey highlights these limitations and points out the future research directions, including adaptive data infrastructure, ethical frameworks for urban data governance, intelligent decision-making systems leveraging multi-source heterogeneous data, and the integration of CIM with emerging technologies such as AI and blockchain. These innovations will enhance CIM’s capacity to support intelligent, resilient, and sustainable urban development. By establishing a theoretical foundation for CIM as a data-intensive framework, this survey provides valuable insights and forward-looking guidance for its continued research and practical implementation. Full article

Electric vehicles have garnered substantial attention as an environmentally sustainable transportation alternative amid escalating global concerns regarding ecological preservation and energy resource management. While the proliferation of electric vehicles necessitates the development of efficient and secure charging infrastructure, the inherent communication-intensive nature of the charging processes has raised concerns regarding potential privacy vulnerabilities. Our paper introduces a privacy protection scheme specifically designed for electric vehicle charging reservations to address this issue. The primary goal of this scheme is to protect user privacy while maintaining operational efficiency and economic viability for charging providers. Our proposed solution ensures a secure and private environment for charging reservation transactions and subsequent deviation settlements by incorporating advanced technologies, including zero-knowledge proof, a consortium blockchain, and homomorphic encryption. The scheme encrypts charging reservation information and securely transmits it via a consortium blockchain, effectively shielding the sensitive data of all participating parties. Notably, the experimental findings establish the robustness of our scheme in terms of its security and privacy protection, aligning with the stringent demands of electric vehicle charging operations. Full article

Bank loan prediction (BLP) analyzes the financial records of individuals to conclude possible loan status. Financial records always contain confidential information. Hence, privacy is significant in the BLP system. This research aims to generate a privacy-preserving automated BLP scheme. To achieve this, differential privacy (DP) is combined with machine learning (ML). Using a benchmark dataset, the proposed method analyzes two different DP techniques, namely Laplacian and Gaussian, with five different ML models: Random Forest (RF), Extreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost), Adaptive Boosting (AdaBoost), Logistic Regression (LR), and Categorical Boosting (CatBoost). Each of the DP techniques is evaluated by varying distinct privacy parameters with 10-fold cross-validation, and from the outcome analysis, optimal parameters are nominated to balance privacy and security. The analysis indicates that applying the Laplacian mechanism with a DP budget of 2 and the RF model achieves the highest accuracy of 62.31%. For the Gaussian method, the best accuracy of 81.25% is attained by the CatBoost model in privacy budget 1.5. Additionally, the proposed method uses explainable artificial intelligence (XAI) to show the conclusion capability of DP-integrated ML models. The proposed research shows an efficient method for automated BLP while preserving the privacy of personal financial information and, thus, mitigating vulnerability to scams and fraud. Full article

The Zaatari Camp in Jordan exemplifies how Syrian refugees transform a planned grid settlement into an organic urban environment through socio-spatial adaptation, reflecting their cultural identity and territorial practices. This study investigates the camp’s morphological evolution, analyzing how refugees reconfigure public and private spaces to prioritize privacy, security, and community cohesion. Using qualitative methods—including archival maps, photographs, and field observations—the research reveals how formal public areas are repurposed into private shelter extensions, creating zones of influence that mirror traditional Arab-Islamic urban patterns. Key elements such as mosques, markets, and hierarchical street networks emerge as cultural anchors, shaped by refugees’ prior urban experiences. However, this organic growth introduces challenges, such as blocked streets and undefined spaces, which hinder safety and service delivery, underscoring tensions between informal urbanization and structured planning. The findings advocate urban resilience and participatory planning frameworks that integrate socio-cultural values, emphasizing defensible boundaries, interdependence, and adaptable design. Refugees’ territorial behaviors—such as creating diagonal streets and expanding shelters—highlight their agency in reshaping urban systems, challenging conventional top-down approaches. This research focuses on land-use dynamics, sustainable cities, and adaptive urban systems in crisis contexts. By bridging gaps between displacement studies and urban theory, the study offers insights into fostering social inclusion and equitable infrastructure in transient settlements. Future research directions, including comparative analyses of refugee camps and cognitive mapping, aim to deepen understanding of socio-spatial resilience. Ultimately, this work contributes to global dialogues on informal urbanization and culturally responsive design, advocating for policies that align with the Sustainable Development Goals to rebuild cohesive, resilient urban environments in displacement settings. Full article

Secret sharing is a robust data protection technique that secures sensitive information by partitioning it into multiple shares, such that the original data can only be reconstructed when a sufficient number of shares are combined. While this method has seen remarkable progress in the realm of images, its exploration and application in 3D models remain in their early stages. Given the growing prominence of 3D models in multimedia applications, ensuring their security and privacy has emerged as a critical area of research. At present, secret sharing approaches for 3D models predominantly rely on the vertex coordinates of the model as the basis for embedding and reconstructing secret messages. However, due to the limited quantity of vertex coordinates, these methods face significant constraints in embedding capacity, thereby limiting the potential of 3D models in secure data sharing. In contrast, the vertex indices of polygons, characterized by higher information density and greater structural flexibility, present a promising alternative medium for embedding secret shares. Building on this premise, the present study investigates the feasibility of leveraging shared vertex indices as a foundation for message embedding. It highlights the advantages of this approach in enhancing both the embedding capacity and the overall security of 3D models. By integrating the Chinese Remainder Theorem into vertex index-based sharing, the proposed method strengthens existing algorithms, offering improved model protection and enhanced embedding security. Experimental evaluations reveal that, compared to traditional vertex coordinate-based methods, incorporating vertex indices into secret sharing techniques significantly increases embedding efficiency while bolstering the security of 3D models. This study not only introduces an innovative approach to safeguarding 3D model data but also paves the way for the broader application of secret sharing techniques in the future. Full article