SERSCIS

The service management framework and emulated airport application services have been released and the software is available for download. The application services provided are emulated versions of services available at an airport that are used in the turnaround of an aircraft to prepare it for an outbound flight. A simulation driver is also provided that allows the user to simulate the flight movements necessary to initiate the turnaround. The service management framework allows the user to monitor and manage these application services, by describing service level agreements between the services and by defining policies to initiate management actions.

The paper “SERSCIS-Ont: A Formal Metrics Model for Adaptive Service Oriented
Frameworks” was awarded “Best Paper” at the ADAPTIVE 2010 conference.

The Port of Gijón (PAG) aims to improve the dependability of its ICT and CCTV network that is supporting all management and security services. PAG is certified according to IMO ISPS Code and ISO Standard 28000. Both of these services rely on the availability of the communications network, under any operational condition. However, the continuity of information and communication services cannot currently be assured. SERSCIS will help to overcome the potential lack of network services availability in case of incidents or accidents.

SERSCIS is relevant to PAG and other Ports in the following ways:

Training
PAG holds, together with the Asturias Business School, a Port Management Training Programme. It has a specific unit dedicated to Port Security Management (Module III – Port Management – Unit 12) in which the SERSCIS architecture and approach is included.

Research & Development
PAG is the most active port authority working in European Research in Spain, and one of the principal ports in Europe. Besides SERSCIS, currently we are also working in SAFEPORT, a FP7 Project under the GALILEO sub-programme, which aims to improve the safety of navigation in internal port water seaways as well as berth planning. SERSCIS will be a valuable input and background to ease the participation of PAG in future R&D related projects.

Port Safety
The Port PC & CCTV networks are a critical infrastructure to enable port functioning. SERSCIS will give a fresh approach to improve the general safety layout and architecture of the Port system, and will allow us to share with 4 other Spanish Ports: Bilbao, Barcelona Valencia and Algeciras, which together form the Port Safety and Security Group, a benchmarking group for technology and best practices transfer. We can similarly approach the Port Safety and Security Working Group at ESPO, the European Sea Port Organization based in Brussels, that gather the main 100 European ports.

Port Community
PAG regularly participates in several workshops, seminars and conferences dedicated to Port R&D across Europe. Port Safety and Security is a must, and probably the most important issue today. SERSCIS, along with PORTIDS, ROSES and other safety and security related projects have most recently been presented at the 3rd European Maritime Day in Gijón.

IT Innovation attended a CyberSecurity workshop hosted by SIGNATURE at PRIT 2010 in Paris. IT Innovation is a member of SITC, which is part of the SIGNATURE network.

Speakers at the event included representatives from UK Government Office of Cyber Security and Information Assurance, French Government ANSSI, and industry: EADS, Thales and Sophos. The common message that the speakers gave was that an increased threat of cyberterrorism requires a commensurate increase in cyberdefence. However, systems are moving from ‘stovepipes’ to increasingly interconnected systems of systems (SoS). Efficient and effective cyberdefence of SoS requires the trustworthy federation of systems, so that emergency situations detected in the context of one system can be communicated to, understood by and, most importantly, trusted by other dependent systems.

Given the emphasis on cybersecurity, there was significant interest in the results of SERSCIS for managing critical infrastructure ICT interdependencies. Following the release of the Stuxnet worm that targets critical infrastructure (CI), there is an increasing awareness of such viruses that exploit zero-day vulnerabilities, which cannot be prevented on the day of release. Operators of CI are beginning to realise that cyberdefence must focus on describing the nature of their dependencies on other systems. Using SERSCIS would allow operators to monitor local CI as well as system interdependencies for behaviour that is indicative of an attack, so that they can react to it rapidly.

IT Innovation have published a paper at the 2nd International Conference on Adaptive and Self-adaptive Systems and Applications.

In the Future Internet, programs will run on a dynamically changing collection of services, entailing the consumption of a more complex set of resources including financial resources. The von Neumann model offers no useful abstractions for such resources, even with refinements to address parallel and distributed computing devices. In this paper we detail the specification for a post-von Neumann model of metrics where program performance and resource consumption can be quantified and encoding of the behaviour of processes that use these resources is possible. Our approach takes a balanced view between service provider and service consumer requirements, supporting service management and protection as well as non-functional specifications for service discovery and composition.

Surridge, M., Chakravarthy, A., Bashevoy, M. and Hall-May, M. (2010) Serscis-Ont: A Formal Metrics Model for Adaptive Service Oriented Frameworks. In: Second International Conference on Adaptive and Self-adaptive Systems and Applications (ADAPTIVE 2010), November 2010, Lisbon, Portugal.