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This paper presents a cybersecurity solution designed to fortify Industrial Control Systems (ICS) against cyberattacks. The proposed solution integrates a Network-based Intrusion Detection System (NIDS) with a Decision Support System (DSS), leveraging machine learning to detect anomalies in network data and employing a filtering mechanism to reduce false alarms. The NIDS protects a simulated ICS testbed, detecting anomalies and forwarding them to the DSS for further analysis and selection of mitigation strategies. We outline the system architecture and showcase promising outcomes from a prototype implementation. Our proof of concept evaluation demonstrates high accuracy in detecting attack scenarios. Challenges such as detection delays between attacks and potential mitigations high-light areas for future improvement. This research contributes to bridging the gap between ML-based IDS and security solutions, paving the way for enhanced cybersecurity in ICS environments.

In order to facilitate deterministic behavior; industrial real-time communication stacks need another design than non-real-time communication stacks typically found in e.g., Internet of Things and Cloud solutions. We propose a flexible stack design that enable code reuse between testbeds and simulators, as well as how stack layers are driven and prioritized. The design can be generalized and used for non-real-time bare-metal solutions like battery powered Internet of Things. Our approach aims at extending the use of simulation during development of industrial systems in order to find logical errors and wrong assumptions earlier in the development. Conducted and evaluated experiments show that the proposed solutions are able to extend the use of simulation during development of real-time communication software. This is achieved by reusing the same code on an industrial testbed and in a discrete event simulator. In addition, the experiments show that the stack design is generalizable and enable reuse with other non-real-time embedded systems. The contribution consists of a set of building blocks for real-time systems that enable control over the system timing when executing on a simulation host while reusing the source code from an industrial testbed. Overall, this will improve the engineering situation, with respect to code reuse, flexibility and debugging.

Industrial real-time software is commonly evaluated on real embedded systems, while simulators are less used, since the abstraction level and purpose vary with for example, different programming languages and run-time contexts. This paper extends, applies, and evaluates previous work on a flexible task design that improve code reuse between discrete event simulators and embedded real-time systems. The paper focuses on two parts: (i) The performance cost of the proposed design in practice, by comparing the flexible task design with a traditional threaded approach. (ii) The potential of an alternative way to support legacy code in combination with discrete event simulation. The experiments indicate an almost negligible performance cost with respect to the real-time behavior, i.e., latency and jitter, while enabling improved code reuse between discrete event simulation and industrial embedded real-time systems.

Embedded systems are today often self-sufficient with limited and predefined communication. However, this traditional view of embedded systems is changing through advancements in technologies such as, communication, cloud technologies, and advanced analytics including machine learning. These advancements have increased the benefits of building Systems of Systems (SoS) that can provide a functionality with unique capabilities that none of the included subsystems can accomplish separately. By this gain of functionality the embedded system is evolving towards a 'dual use' purpose11In this paper we define dual usage as a control system having two purposes. In other contexts such as politics, diplomacy and export control, the term 'dual-use' refers to technology that can be used for both peaceful and military aims, e.g., nuclear power technology., The use is dual in the sense that the system still needs to handle its original task, e.g., control and protect of an asset, and it must provide information for creating the SoS. Larger installations, e.g., industry plants, power systems and generation, have in most cases a long expected life-cycle, some up to 30-40 years without significant updates, compared to analytical functions that evolve and change much faster, i.e., requiring new types of data sets from the subsystems, not know at its first deployment. This difference in development cycles calls for new solutions supporting updates related to new requirements inherent in analytical functions. In this paper, within the context of 'dual usage' of systems and subsystems, we analyze the impact on an embedded system, new or legacy, when it is required to provide analytic data with high quality. We compare a reference system, implementing all functions in one CPU core, to three other alternative solutions: a) a multi-core system where we are using a separate core for analytics, b) using a separate analytics CPU and c) analytics functionality located in a separate subsystem. O

The run-time context in industrial embedded systems varies from bare-metal microcontrollers, to multicore-processors running real-time operating systems. Due to the longevity of industrial systems, reusability and evolvability are often considered crucial quality attributes. This paper presents a new flexible task design that enables tasks to be agnostic to run-time context. Evaluations of the design were made by conducting experiments using a proof of concept implementation of the proposed design. The experiments were based on typical industrial constructs, such as periodic tasks, and event signaling from interrupts. Findings from the experiments show that tasks can be more agnostic to run-time context and still deliver functionality normally used within industry. The results indicate that it is feasible to improve reusability and evolvability between different run-time contexts, and in addition, support hybrid configurations that can reduce resource usage, since e.g. a thread can be easily shared among several tasks.

QC20190614

A life cycle assessment of a Swedish short-rotation coppice willow bioenergy system generating electricity and heat was performed to investigate how the energy efficiency and time-dependent climate impact were affected when the feedstock was converted into bio-oil and char before generating electricity and heat, compared with being combusted directly. The study also investigated how the climate impact was affected when part of the char was applied to soil as biochar to act as a carbon sequestration agent and potential soil improver. The energy efficiencies were calculated separately for electricity and heat as the energy ratios between the amount of energy service delivered by the system compared to the amount of external energy inputs used in each scenario after having allocated the primary energy related to the inputs between the two energy services. The energy in the feedstock was not included in the external energy inputs. Direct combustion had the highest energy efficiency. It had energy ratios of 10 and 36 for electricity and heat, respectively. The least energy-efficient scenario was the pyrolysis scenario where biochar was applied to soils. It had energy ratios of 4 and 12 for electricity and heat, respectively. The results showed that pyrolysis with carbon sequestration might be an option to counteract the current trend in global warming. The pyrolysis system with soil application of the biochar removed the largest amount of CO2 from the atmosphere. However, compared with the direct combustion scenario, the climate change mitigation potential depended on the energy system to which the bioenergy system delivered its energy services. A system expansion showed that direct combustion had the highest climate change mitigation potential when coal or natural gas were used as external energy sources to compensate for the lower energy efficiency of the pyrolysis scenario., QC 20170607

Trends like Internet of Things (IoT), 5G and Cloud are pushing for device connectivity to the Internet, which affects industrial embedded systems with e.g., an increase in code base and functionality. Due to different application requirements, there are relative little reuse between embedded systems with different run-time context (from super loop to multi-threaded), and different types of communication (best effort and real time). In order to improve code reuse and changeability, we propose a flexible communication stack design, that can be configured for time sensitive communication with a real-time operating system (RTOS), or configured for best effort communication with either a super loop or an operating system (OS). Experiments demonstrate the flexibility and simplicity of the design with different configurations, e.g., super loop, single threaded, multi-threaded. Measurements show that the variations in performance related to run-time context scales as expected.

A trend in the industrial domain is that the networks are growing and becoming more complex, this is further accelerated by the digitalization trend. In order to address this, there is a need to improve the efficiency when moving between the R&D phases. For example, integrate innovative research findings into industrial systems, shorten time to market, improve product quality and reduce the number of issues. Despite a huge research effort on network simulators and emulators there are still some issues that needs to be addressed. This paper presents challenges that needs to be resolved, in order for the industry to adopt and benefit from using network simulators and emulators. The major challenges streamlining the workflow in and between the different R&D phases while preserving the real-time aspects in the entire industrial distributed control system.

Short-rotation coppice willow (SRCW) is a fast-growing and potentially high-yielding energy crop. Transition to bioenergy has been identified in Sweden as one strategy to mitigate climate change and decrease the current dependency on fossil fuel. In this study, life cycle assessment was used to evaluate and compare the climate impacts of SRCW systems, for the purpose of evaluating key factors influencing the climate change mitigation potential of SRCW grown on agricultural land in Sweden. Seven different scenarios were defined and analysed to identify the factors with the most influence on the climate. A carbon balance model was used to model carbon fluxes between soil, biomass and atmosphere under Swedish growing conditions. The results indicated that SRCW can act as a temporary carbon sink and therefore has a mitigating effect on climate change. The most important factor in obtaining a high climate change-mitigating effect was shown to be high yield. Low yield gave the worst mitigating effect of the seven scenarios, but it was still better than the effect of the reference systems, district heating produced from coal or natural gas., QC 20160307

The area of dedicated energy crops is expected to increase in Sweden. This will result in direct land use changes, which may affect the carbon stocks in soil and biomass, as well as yield levels and the use of inputs. Carbon dioxide (CO2) fluxes of biomass are often not considered when calculating the climate impact in life cycle assessments (LCA) assuming that the CO2 released at combustion has recently been captured by the biomass in question. With the extended time lag between capture and release of CO2inherent in many perennial bioenergy systems, the relation between carbon neutrality and climate neutrality may be questioned. In this paper, previously published methodologies and models are combined in a methodological framework that can assist LCA practitioners in interpreting the time-dependent climate impact of a bioenergy system. The treatment of carbon differs from conventional LCA practice in that no distinction is made between fossil and biogenic carbon. A time-dependent indicator is used to enable a representation of the climate impact that is not dependent on the choice of a specific characterization time horizon or time of evaluation and that does not use characterization factors, such as global warming potential and global temperature potential. The indicator used to aid in the interpretation phase of this paper is global mean surface temperature change (ΔTs(n)). A theoretical system producing willow for district heating was used to study land use change effects depending on previous land use and variations in the standing biomass carbon stocks. When replacing annual crops with willow this system presented a cooling contribution to ΔTs(n). However, the first years after establishing the willow plantation it presented a warming contribution to ΔTs(n). This behavior was due mainly to soil organic carbon (SOC) variation. A rapid initial increase in standing biomass counteracted the initial SOC loss., QC 20170411

Wide-area networks (WANs) are being deployed worldwide at power utilities. By replacing vintage narrowband solutions, broadband communications can now be used for an entire utility enterprise. One new possibility that has opened up is to improve power system maintenance. During the last ten years, the benefits of adequate asset management have become increasingly clear in the power industry due to the economic pressures and aging infrastructure. An apparent tool to improve the asset-management strategies is the implementation of information technology systems that support the operational processes. The impact of these systems can be further enhanced by efficient communications, allowing the proliferation of functionality and data access. This paper describes the initial stages in analyzing the combined effects of enhanced communication and maintenance requirements. It provides a useful maintenance categorization, based on empirical data. Also, areas of improvement for power system maintenance are elucidated together with the benefit of enhanced communications., QC 20100614

Purpose. This cross-sectional study examined whether partnering with service dogs influenced psychosocial well-being and community participation of adult individuals using wheelchairs or scooters. Method. One hundred and fifty-two people were recruited and group-matched, resulting in 76 participants with and 76 without service dogs. Standardized scale scores for affect, depressive symptoms, self-esteem, and loneliness were used to operationally define psychosocial well-being. Community participation was assessed with the Social Integration domain of the Craig Handicap Assessment and Reporting Technique. Results. Psychosocial characteristics did not differ significantly between those partnered with and without service dogs overall. However, of participants with progressive conditions, those with service dogs demonstrated significantly higher positive affect scores than comparison group participants. Among those with clinical depression, service dog partners scored significantly higher in positive affect. Finally, regardless of whether individuals had service dogs, fewer depressive symptoms and being female or married were predictors of greater community participation. Conclusion. Select individuals may experience psychosocial benefits from partnering with service dogs. However, it is unclear if these benefits might also be derived from companion dogs. Further research is needed to substantiate the findings of this study. © 2006 Informa UK Ltd All rights reserved.