VALU3S - VERIFICATION AND VALIDATION OF AUTOMATED SYSTEMS’ SAFETY AND SECURITY (H2020-ECSEL-2019-2-RIA)

(We are the national coordinator in this project)

Manufacturers of automated systems and the manufacturers of the components used in these systems have been allocating an enormous amount of time and effort in the past years developing and conducting research on automated systems. The effort spent has resulted in the availability of prototypes demonstrating new capabilities as well as the introduction of such systems to the market within different domains. Manufacturers of these systems need to make sure that the systems function in the intended way and according to specifications which is not a trivial task as system complexity rises dramatically the more integrated and interconnected these systems become with the addition of automated functionality and features to them.

With rising complexity, unknown emerging properties of the system may come to the surface making it necessary to conduct thorough verification and validation (V&V) of these systems. VALU3S aims to design, implement and evaluate state-of-the-art V&V methods and tools in order to reduce the time and cost needed to verify and validate automated systems with respect to safety, cybersecurity and privacy (SCP) requirements. This will ensure that European manufacturers of automated systems remain competitive and that they remain world leaders. To this end, a multi-domain framework is designed and evaluated with the aim to create a clear structure around the components and elements needed to conduct V&V process through identification and classification of evaluation methods, tools, environments and concepts that are needed to verify and validate automated systems with respect to SCP requirements.

SAFETY4RAILS - Data-based analysis for SAFETY and security protection FOR detection, prevention, mitigation and response in trans-modal metro and RAILway networkS (H2020-SU-INFRA01-2019)

Supported under H2020-SU-INFRA01-2019: "Protecting the infrastructure of Europe and the people in the European smart cities"

Railways and Metros are safe, efficient, reliable and environmentally friendly mass carriers, and they are becoming even more important means of transportation given the need to address climate change. However, being such critical infrastructures turns metro and railway operators as well as related intermodal transport operators into attractive targets for cyber and/or physical attacks. The SAFETY4RAILS project delivers methods and systems to increase the safety and recovery of track-based inter-city railway and intra-city metro transportation. It addresses both cyber-only attacks (such as impact from WannaCry infections), physical-only attacks (such as the Madrid commuter trains bombing in 2014) and combined cyber-physical attacks, which an important emerging scenarios are given increasing IoT infrastructure integration.

SAFETY4RAILS concentrates on rush hour rail transport scenarios where many passengers are using metros and railways to commute to work or attend mass events (e.g. large multi-venue sporting events such as the Olympics). When an incident occurs during heavy usage, metro and railway operators have to consider many aspects to ensure passenger safety and security, e.g. carry out a threat analysis, maintain situation awareness, establish crisis communication and response, and they have to ensure that mitigation steps are taken and communicated to travellers and other users. SAFETY4RAILS will improve the handling of such events through a holistic approach. It will analyse the cyber-physical resilience of metro and railway systems and deliver mitigation strategies for an efficient response, and, in order to remain secure given everchanging novel emerging risks, it will facilitate continuous adaptation of the SAFETY4RAILS solution; this is validated by two rail transport operators and the results supporting the re-design of the final prototype.

TioCPS - Trustworthy and Smart Communities of Cyber-Physical Systems (ITEA3)

Funding Programme: EUREKA-ITEA3, Grant Number: 18008; Duration: 36 Months: Jul-2020 to Jun 2023

The motivation for TIoCPS project arises from the grand challenge facing cyber-physical systems (CPS): the lack of trustworthy, smart and interoperable information/data sharing and value exchange prevents the establishment of the data economy around CPS. The objective of the project is to technically enable trustworthy and smart communities for CPS systems (TIoCPS concept) for solving the grand challenge in the context of selected industrial use cases dealing with energy, mobility and user/owner CPS systems. The TIoCPS concept combined with the use case solutions are envisioned to boost the business of the respective industries and enable more trustworthy, smart, interoperable and sustainable industrial CPS ecosystem and society.

ERARGE/Erarge will deliver a cyber-physical protection system of a factory by applying the secure digital twin concept that effectively combines the BIM and IoT ontological context. ERARGE/Erarge will focus on the STRIDE and LINDDUN, well-known security and privacy threat models, that can be generalised to any Industry 4.0 and/or robotic smart environment.

We extend the BIM- and GIS-based urbanisation vision to Digital Twin of Factories and Secure Industry 4.0 infrastructures with smart sensor networks.

Provided innovations help improve the health of workers (w.r.t. respiratory system diseases) in harsh situations in the new Covid-19 era.

NGAST – Next Generation Automated Security Testing (ITEA3)

Funding Programme: EUREKA-ITEA3, Grant Number: 20013; Duration: 36 Months: Jul-2021 to Jun 2024

IoT device manufacturers and operators face the challenge of defending a vastly larger attack surface with essentially the same resources. Methods and tools for automated security testing are needed to eliminate security weaknesses lurking in software or APIs. NGAST will tackle these challenges by creating methods to automatically identify software bugs leading to security vulnerabilities and an open, extensible platform where these methods can be easily applied. NGAST’s goal is to develop a next-generation CI/CD-capable automated security testing solution for source code, binaries, and distributed systems in the Internet of Things (IoT).

ERARGE/Erarge will deliver an automated tool for the cyber-physical resilience of a smart transportation by applying the verification and validation in the loop that effectively combines the IoT, security and privacy ontological context.

We extend the Digital Twin to verification and validation of automated systems in the loop for more secure and smart cyber-physical systems

PLASTICART – A Consultation and Training Simulator for Plastic Surgery enriched with AR and VR

Funding Programme: TUBITAK-TEYDEB, Grant Number: 1170537; Duration: 24 Months: Jan-2019 to Dec 2020, No Consortium.

In this project, a 3D layered human head model will be created using Magnetic Resonance (MR) and tomography (CT) slices for facial area aesthetic operations planning, and the existing external view will be modeled with 3D cameras and image processing techniques for better surgery planning. This layered 3D model can be examined on a computer and virtual reality environment with special glasses, and if necessary, simple corrections can be made. All possibilities for the operation will be presented to the surgeon in order to create a semantically based simulation scenario by blending these 3D data with patient information (blood pressure, blood type, anxiety, sugar, existing fracture, wound, etc.), which are critical for the operation. After the surgeon completes the entire consultation about the case on the software with other colleagues, if necessary, he will print the current state of the head of the case and the biomodels (e.g. platinum plate) to be used during and after the operation by means of a 3D laser printer. In the last stage, he will show these hand-held pieces to the patient or students as a hologram with augmented reality glasses.

E2SIS: Energy Efficient Smart Induction Systems

Funding Programme: TUBITAK-TEYDEB, Grant Number: 1170537; Duration: 24 Months: Apr-2017 to Mar 2019, No Consortium.

In E2SIS, an IoT-enabled smart cooking and heating system is developed which is based on induction technology and personalized health monitoring and recommendation. With the design and development of the induction device network, more efficient cooking / heating systems are developed as compared to conventional gas or resistance products. With this technology, energy efficiency has become possible both in cooking / heating food and in adjusting the ambient temperature. In addition, practicality, speed, adjustability, cleanliness, sensitivity and safety against burns are the other advantages.