An integrated blockchain-enabled multi-channel vaccine supply chain network under hybrid uncertainties.

The recent pandemic caused by COVID-19 is considered an unparalleled disaster in history. Developing a vaccine distribution network can provide valuable support to supply chain managers. Prioritizing the assigned available vaccines is crucial due to the limited supply at the final stage of the vaccine supply chain. In addition, parameter uncertainty is a common occurrence in a real supply chain, and it is essential to address this uncertainty in planning models. On the other hand, blockchain technology, being at the forefront of technological advancements, has the potential to enhance transparency within supply chains. Hence, in this study, we develop a new mathematical model for designing a COVID-19 vaccine supply chain network. In this regard, a multi-channel network model is designed to minimize total cost and maximize transparency with blockchain technology consideration. This addresses the uncertainty in supply, and a scenario-based multi-stage stochastic programming method is presented to handle the inherent uncertainty in multi-period planning horizons. In addition, fuzzy programming is used to face the uncertain price and quality of vaccines. Vaccine assignment is based on two main policies including age and population-based priority. The proposed model and method are validated and tested using a real-world case study of Iran. The optimum design of the COVID-19 vaccine supply chain is determined, and some comprehensive sensitivity analyses are conducted on the proposed model. Generally, results demonstrate that the multi-stage stochastic programming model meaningfully reduces the objective function value compared to the competitor model. Also, the results show that one of the efficient factors in increasing satisfied demand and decreasing shortage is the price of each type of vaccine and its agreement.

Digital finance development in China: A scientometric review.

The continuous integration of digital technology and finance has spurred the rapid development of the digital finance industry, making it a critical area of interest for scholars. This study combines quantitative research methods using Citespace software for scientometric analysis and qualitative research methods involving manual selection and content analysis of key literature to summarise the research status, hot topics, and frontiers in the field of digital finance in China. The research findings highlight several influential factors in the digital finance literature, such as regional and journal distribution, institutional and author collaboration, and highly cited literature. Currently, the four most important and cutting-edge research areas are digital currency, digital inclusive finance, fintech and blockchain technology. Furthermore, an analysis of the development trends in digital finance research is conducted and future research perspectives are suggested.

Research and application of tourism management in the IoT industry under the background of sustainable blockchain.

In the contemporary era, there is a heightened awareness of the significance of a spiritual life, and travel is a popular choice for many. The Internet is driving rapid diversification in people's travel choices. At the same time, the traditional tourism industry's Tourism Management (TM) model, which has been in place for decades, is no longer able to satisfy people's diversified choices for tourism. This is due to a number of factors, including the trust crisis caused by asymmetric information, the outdated nature of the TM model, and the insecure personal information that is shared between intermediaries. This paper discusses the application of sustainable blockchain technology in tourism management and sets up a tourism management system based on blockchain and the Internet of Things. It takes 20 scenic spots as examples to study the application of the TM model. This paper evaluates the TM model from four key aspects: tourist satisfaction, tourism infrastructure completeness, tourism consumption level and tourism service content richness. It compares the results with those of the traditional TM system. The experimental results are clear: tourist satisfaction at scenic spots 5, 10 and 15 in the sustainable blockchain TM mode is 68 %, 87 % and 71 % respectively, which is higher than that in the traditional TM mode. In the context of sustainable blockchain, the TM mode is the optimal approach for serving tourists and enhancing their travel experience. This study also assists Chinese tourism business operators in recognizing the potential impact of blockchain technology on the development of the tourism industry. They can then formulate strategies at an early stage to cope with the information technology changes in the era of the digital economy.

Bio-Rollup: a new privacy protection solution for biometrics based on two-layer scalability-focused blockchain.

The increased use of artificial intelligence generated content (AIGC) among vast user populations has heightened the risk of private data leaks. Effective auditing and regulation remain challenging, further compounding the risks associated with the leaks involving model parameters and user data. Blockchain technology, renowned for its decentralized consensus mechanism and tamper-resistant properties, is emerging as an ideal tool for documenting, auditing, and analyzing the behaviors of all stakeholders in machine learning as a service (MLaaS). This study centers on biometric recognition systems, addressing pressing privacy and security concerns through innovative endeavors. We conducted experiments to analyze six distinct deep neural networks, leveraging a dataset quality metric grounded in the query output space to quantify the value of the transfer datasets. This analysis revealed the impact of imbalanced datasets on training accuracy, thereby bolstering the system's capacity to detect model data thefts. Furthermore, we designed and implemented a novel Bio-Rollup scheme, seamlessly integrating technologies such as certificate authority, blockchain layer two scaling, and zero-knowledge proofs. This innovative scheme facilitates lightweight auditing through Merkle proofs, enhancing efficiency while minimizing blockchain storage requirements. Compared to the baseline approach, Bio-Rollup restores the integrity of the biometric system and simplifies deployment procedures. It effectively prevents unauthorized use through certificate authorization and zero-knowledge proofs, thus safeguarding user privacy and offering a passive defense against model stealing attacks.

Applications of blockchain technology in peer-to-peer energy markets and green hydrogen supply chains: a topical review.

Countries all over the world are shifting from conventional and fossil fuel-based energy systems to more sustainable energy systems (renewable energy-based systems). To effectively integrate renewable sources of energy, multi-directional power flow and control are required, and to facilitate this multi-directional power flow, peer-to-peer (P2P) trading is employed. For a safe, secure, and reliable P2P trading system, a secure communication gateway and a cryptographically secure data storage mechanism are required. This paper explores the uses of blockchain (BC) in renewable energy (RE) integration into the grid. We shed light on four primary areas: P2P energy trading, the green hydrogen supply chain, demand response (DR) programmes, and the tracking of RE certificates (RECs). In addition, we investigate how BC can address the existing challenges in these domains and overcome these hurdles to realise a decentralised energy ecosystem. The main purpose of this paper is to provide an understanding of how BC technology can act as a catalyst for a multi-directional energy flow, ultimately revolutionising the way energy is generated, managed, and consumed.

Hybrid computing framework security in dynamic offloading for IoT-enabled smart home system.

In the distributed computing era, cloud computing has completely changed organizational operations by facilitating simple access to resources. However, the rapid development of the IoT has led to collaborative computing, which raises scalability and security challenges. To fully realize the potential of the Internet of Things (IoT) in smart home technologies, there is still a need for strong data security solutions, which are essential in dynamic offloading in conjunction with edge, fog, and cloud computing. This research on smart home challenges covers in-depth examinations of data security, privacy, processing speed, storage capacity restrictions, and analytics inside networked IoT devices. We introduce the Trusted IoT Big Data Analytics (TIBDA) framework as a comprehensive solution to reshape smart living. Our primary focus is mitigating pervasive data security and privacy issues. TIBDA incorporates robust trust mechanisms, prioritizing data privacy and reliability for secure processing and user information confidentiality within the smart home environment. We achieve this by employing a hybrid cryptosystem that combines Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC), Post Quantum Cryptography (PQC), and Blockchain technology (BCT) to protect user privacy and confidentiality. Additionally, we comprehensively compared four prominent Artificial Intelligence anomaly detection algorithms (Isolation Forest, Local Outlier Factor, One-Class SVM, and Elliptic Envelope). We utilized machine learning classification algorithms (random forest, k-nearest neighbors, support vector machines, linear discriminant analysis, and quadratic discriminant analysis) for detecting malicious and non-malicious activities in smart home systems. Furthermore, the main part of the research is with the help of an artificial neural network (ANN) dynamic algorithm; the TIBDA framework designs a hybrid computing system that integrates edge, fog, and cloud architecture and efficiently supports numerous users while processing data from IoT devices in real-time. The analysis shows that TIBDA outperforms these systems significantly across various metrics. In terms of response time, TIBDA demonstrated a reduction of 10-20% compared to the other systems under varying user loads, device counts, and transaction volumes. Regarding security, TIBDA's AUC values were consistently higher by 5-15%, indicating superior protection against threats. Additionally, TIBDA exhibited the highest trustworthiness with an uptime percentage 10-12% greater than its competitors. TIBDA's Isolation Forest algorithm achieved an accuracy of 99.30%, and the random forest algorithm achieved an accuracy of 94.70%, outperforming other methods by 8-11%. Furthermore, our ANN-based offloading decision-making model achieved a validation accuracy of 99% and reduced loss to 0.11, demonstrating significant improvements in resource utilization and system performance.

Emergency Medical Access Control System Based on Public Blockchain.

IT has made significant progress in various fields over the past few years, with many industries transitioning from paper-based to electronic media. However, sharing electronic medical records remains a long-term challenge, particularly when patients are in emergency situations, making it difficult to access and control their medical information. Previous studies have proposed permissioned blockchains with limited participants or mechanisms that allow emergency medical information sharing to pre-designated participants. However, permissioned blockchains require prior participation by medical institutions, and limiting sharing entities restricts the number of potential partners. This means that sharing medical information with local emergency doctors becomes impossible if a patient is unconscious and far away from home, such as when traveling abroad. To tackle this challenge, we propose an emergency access control system for a global electronic medical information system that can be shared using a public blockchain, allowing anyone to participate. Our proposed system assumes that the patient wears a pendant with tamper-proof and biometric authentication capabilities. In the event of unconsciousness, emergency doctors can perform biometrics on behalf of the patient, allowing the family doctor to share health records with the emergency doctor through a secure channel that uses the Diffie-Hellman (DH) key exchange protocol. The pendant's biometric authentication function prevents unauthorized use if it is stolen, and we have tested the blockchain's fee for using the public blockchain, demonstrating that the proposed system is practical.

A digital resource copyright protection scheme based on blockchain cross-chain technology.

With the expansion of the digital publishing industry, copyright infringement of digital resources has become increasingly rampant. Blockchain technology offers a promising solution for copyright protection of digital resources. However, existing copyright protection methods based on single-chain or consortium blockchains have disadvantages such as low system processing efficiency, poor scalability, and a lack of alignment with real-world business needs. To address the current challenges of blockchain technology in the field of copyright protection and establish a more effective solution for protecting digital resource copyrights, while also expanding the application of blockchain cross-chain technology and promoting its development, leveraging blockchain cross-chain theory, technology, and methods, a digital resource copyright protection scheme based on blockchain cross-chain technology was constructed. It outlines detailed processes for copyright registration, resource transactions, copyright modifications, and copyright enforcement. Furthermore, this copyright protection scheme was analyzed. The findings indicated that the blockchain cross-chain technology is suitable for digital resource copyright protection. The proposed copyright protection scheme can allow various stakeholders to better fulfill their roles, in addition to enhancing the overall maintainability and scalability of the blockchain system.

Improved Scheme for Data Aggregation of Distributed Oracle for Intelligent Internet of Things.

Oracle is a data supply mechanism that provides real-world data for blockchain. It serves as a bridge between blockchain and the IoT world, playing a crucial role in solving problems such as data sharing and device management in the IoT field. The main challenge at this stage is determining how to achieve data privacy protection in distributed Oracle machines to safeguard the value hidden in data on the blockchain. In this paper, we propose an improved scheme for distributed Oracle data aggregation based on Paillier encryption algorithm, which achieves end-to-end data privacy protection from devices to users. To address the issue of dishonest distributed Oracle machines running out of funds, we have designed an algorithm called PICA (Paillier-based InChain Aggregation). Based on the aggregation on the Chainlink chain and the Paillier encryption algorithm, random numbers are introduced to avoid the problem of dishonest Oracle machines running out of funds. We use the traffic coverage method to solve the problem of exposed request paths in distributed Oracle machines. Simulation and experimental results show that in small and medium-sized IoT application scenarios with 10,000 data nodes, each additional false request in a single request will result in a delay of about 2 s in data acquisition and can achieve a request response time of 20 s. The proposed method can achieve user data privacy protection.

IOTASDN: IOTA 2.0 Smart Contracts for Securing Software-Defined Networking Ecosystem.

Software-Defined Networking (SDN) has revolutionized network management by providing unprecedented flexibility, control, and efficiency. However, its centralized architecture introduces critical security vulnerabilities. This paper introduces a novel approach to securing SDN environments using IOTA 2.0 smart contracts. The proposed system utilizes the IOTA Tangle, a directed acyclic graph (DAG) structure, to improve scalability and efficiency while eliminating transaction fees and reducing energy consumption. We introduce three smart contracts: Authority, Access Control, and DoS Detector, to ensure trusted and secure network operations, prevent unauthorized access, maintain the integrity of control data, and mitigate denial-of-service attacks. Through comprehensive simulations using Mininet and the ShimmerEVM IOTA Test Network, we demonstrate the efficacy of our approach in enhancing SDN security. Our findings highlight the potential of IOTA 2.0 smart contracts to provide a robust, decentralized solution for securing SDN environments, paving the way for the further integration of blockchain technologies in network management.

A Blockchain-Based Authentication Mechanism for Enhanced Security.

Passwords are the first line of defence against preventing unauthorised access to systems and potential leakage of sensitive data. However, the traditional reliance on username and password combinations is not enough protection and has prompted the implementation of technologies such as two-factor authentication (2FA). While 2FA enhances security by adding a layer of verification, these techniques are not impervious to threats. Even with the implementation of 2FA, the relentless efforts of cybercriminals present formidable obstacles in securing digital spaces. The objective of this work is to implement blockchain technology as a form of 2FA. The findings of this work suggest that blockchain-based 2FA methods could strengthen digital security compared to conventional 2FA methods.

Enhancing Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Security: A Zero-Knowledge Proof Approach with Zero-Knowledge Succinct Non-Interactive Arguments of Knowledge for Authentication and Location Proof.

UAVs are increasingly being used in various domains, from personal and commercial applications to military operations. Ensuring the security and trustworthiness of UAV communications is crucial, and blockchain technology has been explored as a solution. However, privacy remains a challenge, especially in public blockchains. In this work, we propose a novel approach utilizing zero-knowledge proof techniques, specifically zk-SNARKs, which are non-interactive cryptographic proofs. This approach allows UAVs to prove their authenticity or location without disclosing sensitive information. We generated zk-SNARK proofs using the Zokrates tool on a Raspberry Pi, simulating a drone environment, and analyzed power consumption and CPU utilization. The results are promising, especially in the case of larger drones with higher battery capacities. Ethereum was chosen as the public blockchain platform, with smart contracts developed in Solidity and tested on the Sepolia testnet using Remix IDE. This novel proposed approach paves the way for a new path of research in the UAV area.

Letter to the editor: "Edwards curve digital signature algorithm for video integrity verification on blockchain framework".

Video integrity is a crucial aspect of forensic science that guarantees the reliability and validity of visual evidence used in court proceedings. In an era where digital alteration tools are readily available, ensuring that video recordings remain unmodified is essential to upholding the integrity of the legal system. Our technique offers a new, simple way to check the integrity of video data. Our approach makes use of the BLAKE2b hash function, the blockchain, and the Edwards Curve Digital Signature Algorithm. Video segments are pre-recorded video clips for which signatures are generated and kept in chronological blocks. To provide an additional degree of protection, the signature from the prior block is kept in the present block. These signatures are validated at the moment of validation. According to experimental data, our method performs faster and more securely than state-of-the-art approaches. With negligible extra storage requirements, our approach can detect every kind of counterfeit on any video file, by anybody, at any time. Our security analysis further demonstrates that our approach is resistant to a wide range of attacks, such as side channel, collision, key substitution, and chosen message assaults.

System interoperability and data linkage in the era of health information management: A bibliometric analysis.

Background: Across the world, health data generation is growing exponentially. The continuous rise of new and diversified technology to obtain and handle health data places health information management and governance under pressure. Lack of data linkage and interoperability between systems undermines best efforts to optimise integrated health information technology solutions. Objective: This research aimed to provide a bibliometric overview of the role of interoperability and linkage in health data management and governance. Method: Data were acquired by entering selected search queries into Google Scholar, PubMed, and Web of Science databases and bibliometric data obtained were then imported to Endnote and checked for duplicates. The refined data were exported to Excel, where several levels of filtration were applied to obtain the final sample. These sample data were analysed using Microsoft Excel (Microsoft Corporation, Washington, USA), WORDSTAT (Provalis Research, Montreal, Canada) and VOSviewer software (Leiden University, Leiden, Netherlands). Results: The literature sample was retrieved from 3799 unique results and consisted of 63 articles, present in 45 different publications, both evaluated by two specific in-house global impact rankings. Through VOSviewer, three main clusters were identified: (i) e-health information stakeholder needs; (ii) e-health information quality assessment; and (iii) e-health information technological governance trends. A residual correlation between interoperability and linkage studies in the sample was also found. Conclusion: Assessing stakeholders' needs is crucial for establishing an efficient and effective health information system. Further and diversified research is needed to assess the integrated placement of interoperability and linkage in health information management and governance. Implications: This research has provided valuable managerial and theoretical contributions to optimise system interoperability and data linkage within health information research and information technology solutions.

A cross domain access control model for medical consortium based on DBSCAN and penalty function.

BACKGROUND: Graded diagnosis and treatment, referral, and expert consultations between medical institutions all require cross domain access to patient medical information to support doctors' treatment decisions, leading to an increase in cross domain access among various medical institutions within the medical consortium. However, patient medical information is sensitive and private, and it is essential to control doctors' cross domain access to reduce the risk of leakage. Access control is a continuous and long-term process, and it first requires verification of the legitimacy of user identities, while utilizing control policies for selection and management. After verifying user identity and access permissions, it is also necessary to monitor unauthorized operations. Therefore, the content of access control includes authentication, implementation of control policies, and security auditing. Unlike the existing focus on authentication and control strategy implementation in access control, this article focuses on the control based on access log security auditing for doctors who have obtained authorization to access medical resources. This paper designs a blockchain based doctor intelligent cross domain access log recording system, which is used to record, query and analyze the cross domain access behavior of doctors after authorization. Through DBSCAN clustering analysis of doctors' cross domain access logs, we find the abnormal phenomenon of cross domain access, and build a penalty function to dynamically control doctors' cross domain access process, so as to reduce the risk of Data breach. Finally, through comparative analysis and experiments, it is shown that the proposed cross domain access control model for medical consortia based on DBSCAN and penalty function has good control effect on the cross domain access behavior of doctors in various medical institutions of the medical consortia, and has certain feasibility for the cross domain access control of doctors.

A bibliometric analysis assessing the water-energy-food nexus in South Africa.

The Water-Energy-Food (WEF) nexus is a paradigm that emphasises the interconnectedness and collaborative effects of water, energy, and food systems. This study presents a bibliometric analysis of South Africa's WEF nexus research landscape between 2011 and 2024 using the Scopus database. The article highlights the interconnectedness of sustainable development, resource management, sustainability challenges, and resilience strategies in the WEF Nexus in South Africa. The study also identifies critical research gaps in addressing socio-economic dimensions, policy and governance aspects, technological innovation, and human resource development within the WEF Nexus framework. The article reveals the transformative potential of blockchain technology in revolutionising resource management in South Africa. By leveraging blockchain's decentralised and transparent nature, the country can enhance efficiency, transparency, and sustainability in resource allocation and distribution.

Designing A Blockchain-Empowered Telehealth Artifact for Decentralized Identity Management and Trustworthy Communication: Interdisciplinary Approach.

BACKGROUND: Telehealth played a critical role during the COVID-19 pandemic and continues to function as an essential component of health care. Existing platforms cannot ensure privacy and prevent cyberattacks. OBJECTIVE: The main objectives of this study are to understand existing cybersecurity issues in identity management and trustworthy communication processes in telehealth platforms and to design a software architecture integrated with blockchain to improve security and trustworthiness with acceptable performance. METHODS: We improved personal information security in existing telehealth platforms by adopting an innovative interdisciplinary approach combining design science, social science, and computer science in the health care domain, with prototype implementation. We used the design science research methodology to implement our overall design. We innovated over existing telehealth platforms with blockchain integration that improves health care delivery services in terms of security, privacy, and efficiency. We adopted a user-centric design approach and started with user requirement collection, followed by system functionality development. Overall system implementation facilitates user requirements, thus promoting user behavior for the adoption of the telehealth platform with decentralized identity management and an access control mechanism. RESULTS: Our investigation identified key challenges to identity management and trustworthy communication processes in telehealth platforms used in the current health care domain. By adopting distributed ledger technology, we proposed a decentralized telehealth platform to support identity management and a trustworthy communication process. Our design and prototype implementation using a smart contract-driven telehealth platform to provide decentralized identity management and trustworthy communication with token-based access control addressed several security challenges. This was substantiated by testing with 10,000 simulated transactions across 5 peers in the Rahasak blockchain network. The proposed design provides resistance to common attacks while maintaining a linear time overhead, demonstrating improved security and efficiency in telehealth services. We evaluated the performance in terms of transaction throughput, smart contract execution time, and block generation time. To create a block with 10,000 transactions, it takes 8 seconds on average, which is an acceptable overhead for blockchain-based applications. CONCLUSIONS: We identified technical limitations in current telehealth platforms. We presented several design innovations using blockchain to prototype a system. We also presented the implementation details of a unique distributed architecture for a trustworthy communication system. We illustrated how this design can overcome privacy, security, and scalability limitations. Moreover, we illustrated how improving these factors sets the stage for improving and standardizing the application and for the wide adoption of blockchain-enabled telehealth platforms.

Application of Attribute-Based Encryption in Military Internet of Things Environment.

The Military Internet of Things (MIoT) has emerged as a new research area in military intelligence. The MIoT frequently has to constitute a federation-capable IoT environment when the military needs to interact with other institutions and organizations or carry out joint missions as part of a coalition such as in NATO. One of the main challenges of deploying the MIoT in such an environment is to acquire, analyze, and merge vast amounts of data from many different IoT devices and disseminate them in a secure, reliable, and context-dependent manner. This challenge is one of the main challenges in a federated environment and forms the basis for establishing trusting relationships and secure communication between IoT devices belonging to different partners. In this work, we focus on the problem of fulfillment of the data-centric security paradigm, i.e., ensuring the secure management of data along the path from its origin to the recipients and implementing fine-grained access control mechanisms. This problem can be solved using innovative solutions such as applying attribute-based encryption (ABE). In this work, we present a comprehensive solution for secure data dissemination in a federated MIoT environment, enabling the use of distributed registry technology (Hyperledger Fabric), a message broker (Apache Kafka), and data processing microservices implemented using the Kafka Streams API library. We designed and implemented ABE cryptography data access control methods using a combination of pairings-based elliptic curve cryptography and lightweight cryptography and confirmed their suitability for the federations of military networks. Experimental studies indicate that the proposed cryptographic scheme is viable for the number of attributes typically assumed to be used in battlefield networks, offering a good trade-off between security and performance for modern cryptographic applications.

Blockchain 6G-Based Wireless Network Security Management with Optimization Using Machine Learning Techniques.

6G mobile network technology will set new standards to meet performance goals that are too ambitious for 5G networks to satisfy. The limitations of 5G networks have been apparent with the deployment of more and more 5G networks, which certainly encourages the investigation of 6G networks as the answer for the future. This research includes fundamental privacy and security issues related to 6G technology. Keeping an eye on real-time systems requires secure wireless sensor networks (WSNs). Denial of service (DoS) attacks mark a significant security vulnerability that WSNs face, and they can compromise the system as a whole. This research proposes a novel method in blockchain 6G-based wireless network security management and optimization using a machine learning model. In this research, the deployed 6G wireless sensor network security management is carried out using a blockchain user datagram transport protocol with reinforcement projection regression. Then, the network optimization is completed using artificial democratic cuckoo glowworm remora optimization. The simulation results have been based on various network parameters regarding throughput, energy efficiency, packet delivery ratio, end-end delay, and accuracy. In order to minimise network traffic, it also offers the capacity to determine the optimal node and path selection for data transmission. The proposed technique obtained 97% throughput, 95% energy efficiency, 96% accuracy, 50% end-end delay, and 94% packet delivery ratio.