Luca Ferrucci - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Luca Ferrucci

IEEE access, 2024

The Internet is experiencing a fast expansion at its edges. The wide availability of heterogeneou... more The Internet is experiencing a fast expansion at its edges. The wide availability of heterogeneous resources at the Edge is pivotal in the definition and extension of traditional Cloud solutions toward supporting the development of new applications. However, the dynamic and distributed nature of these resources poses new challenges for the optimization of the behavior of the system. New decentralized and self-organizing methods are needed to face the Cloud-Edge scenario's needs and optimize the exploitation of Edge resources. In this paper we propose a distributed and adaptive solution that reduces the number of replicas of application services that are executed throughout the system, all the while ensuring that the latency constraints of applications are met, thus allowing also to meet the end users' QoS requirements. Experimental evaluations through simulation show the effectiveness of the proposed approach.

Proceedings of the 2nd Workshop on Flexible Resource and Application Management on the Edge

Edge computing promises to bring computation and storage close to end-users, opening exciting new... more Edge computing promises to bring computation and storage close to end-users, opening exciting new areas of improvement for applications with a high level of interactivity and requiring low latency. However, these improvements require careful scheduling of applications in the correct Edge resource. This decision is generally taken by considering multiple parameters, including the network capabilities. In this paper, we discuss an approach that measures latency and bandwidth between multiple clients and Edge servers. The approach is based on recent Serverless computing technologies, and it is meant as a support to take timely and correct scheduling decisions in the Edge. We also provide the description of a proof of concept implementation of the said approach. CCS CONCEPTS • Computer systems organization → Cloud computing; • Networks → Network performance analysis.

Proceedings of the 1st Workshop on Flexible Resource and Application Management on the Edge, 2020

The Internet is experiencing a fast expansion at its edges. The wide availability of heterogeneou... more The Internet is experiencing a fast expansion at its edges. The wide availability of heterogeneous resources at the Edge is pivotal in the definition and extension of traditional Cloud solutions toward supporting the development of new applications. However, the dynamic and distributed nature of these resources poses new challenges for the optimization of the behaviour of the system. New decentralized and self-organizing methods are needed to face the needs of the Edge/Cloud scenario and to optimize the exploitation of Edge resources. In this paper we propose a distributed and adaptive solution that reduces the number of replicas of application services that are executed throughout the system, all the while ensuring that the latency constraints of applications are met, thus allowing to also meet the end users' QoS requirements. Experimental evaluations through simulation show the effectiveness of the proposed approach. CCS CONCEPTS • Computer systems organization → Cloud computing; • Information systems → Computing platforms.

Advances in Science, Technology and Engineering Systems Journal, 2018

The number of smart devices inside the living environments grows more and more every day, and wit... more The number of smart devices inside the living environments grows more and more every day, and with it the need to interface them in order to share data and activate functions. Each day, new scenarios and new applications emerge to make our lives easier in many different contexts. The AAL SOCIALIZE project aims to create a new reference platform for active ageing by applying technological solutions to care for the health of the elderly, facilitate their daily activities, simplify their access to dedicated services. The work presented herein describes the "Elderly Monitoring service"-an IoT module of the SOCIALIZE platform, whose aim is to monitor elderly people's activities and physiological parameters and to combine smart device functions. This modeling process can actively contribute to anticipating, and thereby preventing, emergency situations, increasing elderly autonomy and making them feel "protected" and "safe". In this regard, the system implements a practicable, scalable solution that allows heterogeneous devices belonging to different domotic systems using diverse protocols to interact with each other, share data and services and bind together through 'friendship', thereby creating an infrastructure suitable for the creation of a true Social IoT (SIoT).

Journal of Computer and System Sciences, 2016

The definition of a support for multi-attribute range queries is mandatory for highly distributed... more The definition of a support for multi-attribute range queries is mandatory for highly distributed systems. Even if several solutions have been proposed in the last decade, most of them do not meet the requirements of recent platforms, like IoT or smart cities. The paper presents an approach that builds a multidimensional Voronoi graph by exploiting the attributes of the objects published by a node. Our solution overcomes the curse of dimensionality issue affecting Voronoi Tessellations in high dimensional spaces by defining a Voronoi hierarchy. The paper formally defines the structure, analysis the complexity of the operations and presents experimental results.

2021 IEEE Symposium on Computers and Communications (ISCC), 2021

Federated learning is a popular framework that enables harvesting edge resources' computational p... more Federated learning is a popular framework that enables harvesting edge resources' computational power to train a machine learning model distributively. However, it is not always feasible or profitable to have a centralized server that controls and synchronizes the training process. In this paper, we consider the problem of training a machine learning model over a network of nodes in a fully decentralized fashion. In particular, we look for empirical evidence on how sensitive is the training process for various network characteristics and communication parameters. We present the outcome of several simulations conducted with different network topologies, datasets, and machine learning models.

Proc. of the 17th European Simulation Multi Conference. Nottingham, UK:[Sn], 2003

Abstract. This paper presents a new domain decomposition approach whose main goal is the computat... more Abstract. This paper presents a new domain decomposition approach whose main goal is the computation of a load balancing partition while reducing the overhead to compute such a partition. In the proposed approach, the number of neighbours of each sub-domain produced by the decomposition can be bounded by an user supplied value. This reduces the communication overhead of the application. We describe an algorithm implementing our decomposition strategy and apply our approach to WaTOR, a classical dynamical ...

Proceedings of the 31st International Symposium on High-Performance Parallel and Distributed Computing

The 2nd International Workshop on Flexible Resource and Application Management on the Edge (FRAME... more The 2nd International Workshop on Flexible Resource and Application Management on the Edge (FRAME 2022) is dedicated to the so-called Cloud/Edge Continuum, where Cloud and Edge infrastructures can work together to fulfill requirements from a variety of NextGen applications. Clouds provide appropriate levels of performance to large groups of different users, whereas Edge resources act as a first layer of computing capacity that is closer to the user, to reduce the service latency. With respect to Clouds, Edge infrastructures typically are composed of heterogeneous and constrained resources and introduce new challenges from the viewpoint of security, orchestration and resource management. Tackling these new issues calls for innovative combinations of tools and abstractions, where AI and machine learning techniques complement algorithmic orchestration and optimization, bringing about new levels of distributed adaptivity and self-management. As real-time data-driven decisions can be promptly taken on the spot, without the need to wait for data to travel to the Cloud and back, also interactive and time-sensitive services like the immersive data processing of Extended Reality (XR) applications can be partially extended toward the edge, thus exploiting a better computation to communication tradeoff and smoother connections to improve their QoE and remote collaboration. The FRAME'22 workshop proceedings are available at: https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=3526059.

2019 4th International Conference on Computing, Communications and Security (ICCCS), 2019

The spread of enabling technologies for the Internet of Things allows the creation of new scenari... more The spread of enabling technologies for the Internet of Things allows the creation of new scenarios in which home automation plays a significant role. Platforms for smart cities and communities, which must include applications for energy efficiency, health, mobility, security, etc., cannot ignore the use of data gathered directly from homes. In order to implement such scenarios, all the related technological infrastructure and home systems must be able to understand each other and exchange information. In this work, we present a new platform that achieves interoperability between heterogeneous home automation systems. It allows different, incompatible technologies to cooperate inside and outside the home, thus creating a single ecosystem. In order to achieve tins goal, specific problems need to be solved to be able to construct “bridges” between the various home automation networks currently in use. In this regard, some specific solutions adopted for integrating two different technologies (KNX and MyHome) within a home automation platform are illustrated.

ArXiv, 2021

This paper presents the idea and the concepts behind the vision of an Ephemeral Cloud/Edge Contin... more This paper presents the idea and the concepts behind the vision of an Ephemeral Cloud/Edge Continuum, a cloud/edge computing landscape that enables the exploitation of a widely distributed, dynamic, and context-aware set of resources. The Ephemeral Continuum answer to the need of combining a plethora of heterogeneous devices, which nowadays are pervasively embedding anthropic environments, with both federations of cloud providers and the resources located at the Edge. The aim of the Ephemeral Continuum is to realise a context-aware and personalised federation of computational, data and network resources, able to manage their heterogeneity in a highly distributed deployment.

Theoretical Computer Science, 2016

Many systems include components interacting with each other that evolve with possibly very differ... more Many systems include components interacting with each other that evolve with possibly very different speeds. To deal with this situation many formal models adopt the abstraction of "zero-time transitions", which do not consume time. These, however, have several drawbacks in terms of naturalness and logic consistency, as a system is modeled to be in different states at the same time. We propose a novel approach that exploits concepts from non-standard analysis and pairs them with the traditional "next" operator of temporal logic to introduce a notion of micro-and macro-steps in an extension of the TRIO metric temporal logic, called X-TRIO. We study the expressiveness and decidability properties of the new logic; decidability is achieved through translation of a meaningful subset of X-TRIO into Linear Temporal Logic, which is a traditional means to support automatic verification. We illustrate the usefulness and the generality of our approach by applying it to provide a formal semantics of timed Petri nets which allows for their automated verification; we also give an overview of a formal semantics of Stateflow/Simulink diagrams that has been defined in terms of X-TRIO and used for automatic verification.

2016 Third International Conference on eDemocracy & eGovernment (ICEDEG), 2016

One the main objective of the European Commission is to innovate and bring ICT to its full potent... more One the main objective of the European Commission is to innovate and bring ICT to its full potential in any sector, including eGovernment, eCommerce, and eHealth services. Certified Electronic Mail (CEM) systems of Member States are currently not interoperable, thus impacting on economic growth and competitiveness. The paper investigates the use of the DNSSec technology as a technological evolution of the Italian CEM System and the first step towards interoperability and adherence to international standards.

Communications in Computer and Information Science, 2015

We formalize timed workflow with abnormal behavior management (i.e. recovery) and demonstrate how... more We formalize timed workflow with abnormal behavior management (i.e. recovery) and demonstrate how temporal logics and model checking are methodologies to iteratively revise the design correct-by construction system. We define a formal semantics by compiling generic workflow patterns into an extension of LTL with dense time clocks (CLTLoc). CLTLoc allows us to define the first logical formalization of workflows that can be practically employed in verification tools and to avoid the use of well-known automata based formalisms dealing with real-time. We use an ad-hoc bound model checker to prove requirements validity on a business process. The working assumption is that lightweight approaches easily fit into processes that are already in place so that radical change of procedures, tools and people's attitudes are not needed. The complexity of formalisms and invasiveness of methods have been demonstrated to be one of the major drawback and obstacle for deployment of formal engineering techniques into mundane projects.

2015 IEEE/ACM 1st International Workshop on TEchnical and LEgal aspects of data pRivacy and SEcurity, 2015

Over the last decade, an increasing number of Certified E-Mail systems (CEM) have been implemente... more Over the last decade, an increasing number of Certified E-Mail systems (CEM) have been implemented in Europe and worldwide, but their diffusion and validity are mainly restricted in a national arena. Despite the effort of European Union (EU) that recently defined a specification for guaranteeing interoperability of CEM systems between Member States, its adoption has not be not yet fuelled, mainly since any CEM system receives a legal value by its State legislation. It is difficult to extend the legal value of CEM security mechanisms, e.g. receipts with timestamps which are considered evidences and legal proofs in disputes that may arise from different Parties inside a State, unless a common political and legal agreement will be created. At this aim, recently EU introduce the new Regulation on Electronic Identification and Trust Services (eIDAS) , to address this issue. We believe that the first step for encouraging a more large adoption between communities is to implement CEMs using standard worldwide recognized solutions. In this paper we propose a technical evolution of the Italian CEM, called Posta Elettronica Certificata (PEC) moving from a close mechanisms to the adoption of a more standardized, distributed solution, based on DNS Security Extensions (DNSSec). This proposal would have a minimal impact on the legislation, restricted to the annex that defines PEC technical rules.

Many systems include components interacting with each other that evolve with possibly very differ... more Many systems include components interacting with each other that evolve with possibly very different speeds. To deal with this situation many formal models adopt the abstraction of "zero-time transitions", which do not consume time. These however have several drawbacks in terms of naturalness and logic consistency, as a system is modeled to be in different states at the same time. We propose a novel approach that exploits concepts from non-standard analysis to introduce a notion of micro- and macro-steps in an extension of the TRIO metric temporal logic, called X-TRIO. We use X-TRIO to provide a formal semantics and an automated verification technique to Stateflow-like notations used in the design of flexible manufacturing systems.

2010 IEEE 10th International Conference on Peer-to-Peer Computing, P2P 2010 - Proceedings, 2010

The problem of defining a support for multidimensional range queries on P2P overlays is currently... more The problem of defining a support for multidimensional range queries on P2P overlays is currently an active field of research. Several approaches based on the extension of the basic functionalities offered by Distributed Hash Tables have been recently proposed. The main drawback of these approaches is that the locality required for the resolution of a range query cannot be guaranteed by uniform hashing. On the other way, locality preserving hashing functions do not guarantee a good level of load balancing. This paper presents Hivory, a P2P overlay based on a Voronoi tessellation defined by the objects published by peers. Each object is mapped to a site of the Voronoi tessellation and the corresponding Delaunay Triangulation defines the P2P overlay. A hierarchy of Voronoi diagrams is defined by exploiting clusters of objects paired with the same site of the Voronoi diagram. A new Voronoi diagram including the peers of the cluster is created so that the query resolution may be refined by a top down visit of the Voronoi hierarchy. The paper presents the proposed solution, analyses its complexity, and provides a set of experimental results.

Journal of Intelligent Manufacturing, 2013

In this paper we present an effective approach to perform formal verification of properties of in... more In this paper we present an effective approach to perform formal verification of properties of interest of production systems whose behavior is modeled through Stateflow diagrams. The approach hinges on a semantics of Stateflow diagrams given in terms of formulae of a metric temporal logic. The semantics has been implemented in a fully automated tool which allows users to define a wide range of properties of interest and then to check whether they hold for the system or not. We also point out an error in the design of the system that has been detected by applying the technique.

Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Software Paradigm Trends, 2014

We describe a business workflow case study with abnormal behavior management (i.e. recovery) and ... more We describe a business workflow case study with abnormal behavior management (i.e. recovery) and demonstrate how temporal logics and model checking can provide a methodology to iteratively revise the design and obtain a correct-by construction system. To do so we define a formal semantics by giving a compilation of generic workflow patterns into LTL and we use the bound model checker Zot to prove specific properties and requirements validity. The working assumption is that such a lightweight approach would easily fit into processes that are already in place without the need for a radical change of procedures, tools and people's attitudes. The complexity of formalisms and invasiveness of methods have been demonstrated to be one of the major drawback and obstacle for deployment of formal engineering techniques into mundane projects.

IEEE access, 2024

The Internet is experiencing a fast expansion at its edges. The wide availability of heterogeneou... more The Internet is experiencing a fast expansion at its edges. The wide availability of heterogeneous resources at the Edge is pivotal in the definition and extension of traditional Cloud solutions toward supporting the development of new applications. However, the dynamic and distributed nature of these resources poses new challenges for the optimization of the behavior of the system. New decentralized and self-organizing methods are needed to face the Cloud-Edge scenario's needs and optimize the exploitation of Edge resources. In this paper we propose a distributed and adaptive solution that reduces the number of replicas of application services that are executed throughout the system, all the while ensuring that the latency constraints of applications are met, thus allowing also to meet the end users' QoS requirements. Experimental evaluations through simulation show the effectiveness of the proposed approach.

Proceedings of the 2nd Workshop on Flexible Resource and Application Management on the Edge

Edge computing promises to bring computation and storage close to end-users, opening exciting new... more Edge computing promises to bring computation and storage close to end-users, opening exciting new areas of improvement for applications with a high level of interactivity and requiring low latency. However, these improvements require careful scheduling of applications in the correct Edge resource. This decision is generally taken by considering multiple parameters, including the network capabilities. In this paper, we discuss an approach that measures latency and bandwidth between multiple clients and Edge servers. The approach is based on recent Serverless computing technologies, and it is meant as a support to take timely and correct scheduling decisions in the Edge. We also provide the description of a proof of concept implementation of the said approach. CCS CONCEPTS • Computer systems organization → Cloud computing; • Networks → Network performance analysis.

Proceedings of the 1st Workshop on Flexible Resource and Application Management on the Edge, 2020

The Internet is experiencing a fast expansion at its edges. The wide availability of heterogeneou... more The Internet is experiencing a fast expansion at its edges. The wide availability of heterogeneous resources at the Edge is pivotal in the definition and extension of traditional Cloud solutions toward supporting the development of new applications. However, the dynamic and distributed nature of these resources poses new challenges for the optimization of the behaviour of the system. New decentralized and self-organizing methods are needed to face the needs of the Edge/Cloud scenario and to optimize the exploitation of Edge resources. In this paper we propose a distributed and adaptive solution that reduces the number of replicas of application services that are executed throughout the system, all the while ensuring that the latency constraints of applications are met, thus allowing to also meet the end users' QoS requirements. Experimental evaluations through simulation show the effectiveness of the proposed approach. CCS CONCEPTS • Computer systems organization → Cloud computing; • Information systems → Computing platforms.

Advances in Science, Technology and Engineering Systems Journal, 2018

The number of smart devices inside the living environments grows more and more every day, and wit... more The number of smart devices inside the living environments grows more and more every day, and with it the need to interface them in order to share data and activate functions. Each day, new scenarios and new applications emerge to make our lives easier in many different contexts. The AAL SOCIALIZE project aims to create a new reference platform for active ageing by applying technological solutions to care for the health of the elderly, facilitate their daily activities, simplify their access to dedicated services. The work presented herein describes the "Elderly Monitoring service"-an IoT module of the SOCIALIZE platform, whose aim is to monitor elderly people's activities and physiological parameters and to combine smart device functions. This modeling process can actively contribute to anticipating, and thereby preventing, emergency situations, increasing elderly autonomy and making them feel "protected" and "safe". In this regard, the system implements a practicable, scalable solution that allows heterogeneous devices belonging to different domotic systems using diverse protocols to interact with each other, share data and services and bind together through 'friendship', thereby creating an infrastructure suitable for the creation of a true Social IoT (SIoT).

Journal of Computer and System Sciences, 2016

The definition of a support for multi-attribute range queries is mandatory for highly distributed... more The definition of a support for multi-attribute range queries is mandatory for highly distributed systems. Even if several solutions have been proposed in the last decade, most of them do not meet the requirements of recent platforms, like IoT or smart cities. The paper presents an approach that builds a multidimensional Voronoi graph by exploiting the attributes of the objects published by a node. Our solution overcomes the curse of dimensionality issue affecting Voronoi Tessellations in high dimensional spaces by defining a Voronoi hierarchy. The paper formally defines the structure, analysis the complexity of the operations and presents experimental results.

2021 IEEE Symposium on Computers and Communications (ISCC), 2021

Federated learning is a popular framework that enables harvesting edge resources' computational p... more Federated learning is a popular framework that enables harvesting edge resources' computational power to train a machine learning model distributively. However, it is not always feasible or profitable to have a centralized server that controls and synchronizes the training process. In this paper, we consider the problem of training a machine learning model over a network of nodes in a fully decentralized fashion. In particular, we look for empirical evidence on how sensitive is the training process for various network characteristics and communication parameters. We present the outcome of several simulations conducted with different network topologies, datasets, and machine learning models.

Proc. of the 17th European Simulation Multi Conference. Nottingham, UK:[Sn], 2003

Abstract. This paper presents a new domain decomposition approach whose main goal is the computat... more Abstract. This paper presents a new domain decomposition approach whose main goal is the computation of a load balancing partition while reducing the overhead to compute such a partition. In the proposed approach, the number of neighbours of each sub-domain produced by the decomposition can be bounded by an user supplied value. This reduces the communication overhead of the application. We describe an algorithm implementing our decomposition strategy and apply our approach to WaTOR, a classical dynamical ...

Proceedings of the 31st International Symposium on High-Performance Parallel and Distributed Computing

The 2nd International Workshop on Flexible Resource and Application Management on the Edge (FRAME... more The 2nd International Workshop on Flexible Resource and Application Management on the Edge (FRAME 2022) is dedicated to the so-called Cloud/Edge Continuum, where Cloud and Edge infrastructures can work together to fulfill requirements from a variety of NextGen applications. Clouds provide appropriate levels of performance to large groups of different users, whereas Edge resources act as a first layer of computing capacity that is closer to the user, to reduce the service latency. With respect to Clouds, Edge infrastructures typically are composed of heterogeneous and constrained resources and introduce new challenges from the viewpoint of security, orchestration and resource management. Tackling these new issues calls for innovative combinations of tools and abstractions, where AI and machine learning techniques complement algorithmic orchestration and optimization, bringing about new levels of distributed adaptivity and self-management. As real-time data-driven decisions can be promptly taken on the spot, without the need to wait for data to travel to the Cloud and back, also interactive and time-sensitive services like the immersive data processing of Extended Reality (XR) applications can be partially extended toward the edge, thus exploiting a better computation to communication tradeoff and smoother connections to improve their QoE and remote collaboration. The FRAME'22 workshop proceedings are available at: https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=3526059.

2019 4th International Conference on Computing, Communications and Security (ICCCS), 2019

The spread of enabling technologies for the Internet of Things allows the creation of new scenari... more The spread of enabling technologies for the Internet of Things allows the creation of new scenarios in which home automation plays a significant role. Platforms for smart cities and communities, which must include applications for energy efficiency, health, mobility, security, etc., cannot ignore the use of data gathered directly from homes. In order to implement such scenarios, all the related technological infrastructure and home systems must be able to understand each other and exchange information. In this work, we present a new platform that achieves interoperability between heterogeneous home automation systems. It allows different, incompatible technologies to cooperate inside and outside the home, thus creating a single ecosystem. In order to achieve tins goal, specific problems need to be solved to be able to construct “bridges” between the various home automation networks currently in use. In this regard, some specific solutions adopted for integrating two different technologies (KNX and MyHome) within a home automation platform are illustrated.

ArXiv, 2021

This paper presents the idea and the concepts behind the vision of an Ephemeral Cloud/Edge Contin... more This paper presents the idea and the concepts behind the vision of an Ephemeral Cloud/Edge Continuum, a cloud/edge computing landscape that enables the exploitation of a widely distributed, dynamic, and context-aware set of resources. The Ephemeral Continuum answer to the need of combining a plethora of heterogeneous devices, which nowadays are pervasively embedding anthropic environments, with both federations of cloud providers and the resources located at the Edge. The aim of the Ephemeral Continuum is to realise a context-aware and personalised federation of computational, data and network resources, able to manage their heterogeneity in a highly distributed deployment.

Theoretical Computer Science, 2016

Many systems include components interacting with each other that evolve with possibly very differ... more Many systems include components interacting with each other that evolve with possibly very different speeds. To deal with this situation many formal models adopt the abstraction of "zero-time transitions", which do not consume time. These, however, have several drawbacks in terms of naturalness and logic consistency, as a system is modeled to be in different states at the same time. We propose a novel approach that exploits concepts from non-standard analysis and pairs them with the traditional "next" operator of temporal logic to introduce a notion of micro-and macro-steps in an extension of the TRIO metric temporal logic, called X-TRIO. We study the expressiveness and decidability properties of the new logic; decidability is achieved through translation of a meaningful subset of X-TRIO into Linear Temporal Logic, which is a traditional means to support automatic verification. We illustrate the usefulness and the generality of our approach by applying it to provide a formal semantics of timed Petri nets which allows for their automated verification; we also give an overview of a formal semantics of Stateflow/Simulink diagrams that has been defined in terms of X-TRIO and used for automatic verification.

2016 Third International Conference on eDemocracy & eGovernment (ICEDEG), 2016

One the main objective of the European Commission is to innovate and bring ICT to its full potent... more One the main objective of the European Commission is to innovate and bring ICT to its full potential in any sector, including eGovernment, eCommerce, and eHealth services. Certified Electronic Mail (CEM) systems of Member States are currently not interoperable, thus impacting on economic growth and competitiveness. The paper investigates the use of the DNSSec technology as a technological evolution of the Italian CEM System and the first step towards interoperability and adherence to international standards.

Communications in Computer and Information Science, 2015

We formalize timed workflow with abnormal behavior management (i.e. recovery) and demonstrate how... more We formalize timed workflow with abnormal behavior management (i.e. recovery) and demonstrate how temporal logics and model checking are methodologies to iteratively revise the design correct-by construction system. We define a formal semantics by compiling generic workflow patterns into an extension of LTL with dense time clocks (CLTLoc). CLTLoc allows us to define the first logical formalization of workflows that can be practically employed in verification tools and to avoid the use of well-known automata based formalisms dealing with real-time. We use an ad-hoc bound model checker to prove requirements validity on a business process. The working assumption is that lightweight approaches easily fit into processes that are already in place so that radical change of procedures, tools and people's attitudes are not needed. The complexity of formalisms and invasiveness of methods have been demonstrated to be one of the major drawback and obstacle for deployment of formal engineering techniques into mundane projects.

2015 IEEE/ACM 1st International Workshop on TEchnical and LEgal aspects of data pRivacy and SEcurity, 2015

Over the last decade, an increasing number of Certified E-Mail systems (CEM) have been implemente... more Over the last decade, an increasing number of Certified E-Mail systems (CEM) have been implemented in Europe and worldwide, but their diffusion and validity are mainly restricted in a national arena. Despite the effort of European Union (EU) that recently defined a specification for guaranteeing interoperability of CEM systems between Member States, its adoption has not be not yet fuelled, mainly since any CEM system receives a legal value by its State legislation. It is difficult to extend the legal value of CEM security mechanisms, e.g. receipts with timestamps which are considered evidences and legal proofs in disputes that may arise from different Parties inside a State, unless a common political and legal agreement will be created. At this aim, recently EU introduce the new Regulation on Electronic Identification and Trust Services (eIDAS) , to address this issue. We believe that the first step for encouraging a more large adoption between communities is to implement CEMs using standard worldwide recognized solutions. In this paper we propose a technical evolution of the Italian CEM, called Posta Elettronica Certificata (PEC) moving from a close mechanisms to the adoption of a more standardized, distributed solution, based on DNS Security Extensions (DNSSec). This proposal would have a minimal impact on the legislation, restricted to the annex that defines PEC technical rules.

Many systems include components interacting with each other that evolve with possibly very differ... more Many systems include components interacting with each other that evolve with possibly very different speeds. To deal with this situation many formal models adopt the abstraction of "zero-time transitions", which do not consume time. These however have several drawbacks in terms of naturalness and logic consistency, as a system is modeled to be in different states at the same time. We propose a novel approach that exploits concepts from non-standard analysis to introduce a notion of micro- and macro-steps in an extension of the TRIO metric temporal logic, called X-TRIO. We use X-TRIO to provide a formal semantics and an automated verification technique to Stateflow-like notations used in the design of flexible manufacturing systems.

2010 IEEE 10th International Conference on Peer-to-Peer Computing, P2P 2010 - Proceedings, 2010

The problem of defining a support for multidimensional range queries on P2P overlays is currently... more The problem of defining a support for multidimensional range queries on P2P overlays is currently an active field of research. Several approaches based on the extension of the basic functionalities offered by Distributed Hash Tables have been recently proposed. The main drawback of these approaches is that the locality required for the resolution of a range query cannot be guaranteed by uniform hashing. On the other way, locality preserving hashing functions do not guarantee a good level of load balancing. This paper presents Hivory, a P2P overlay based on a Voronoi tessellation defined by the objects published by peers. Each object is mapped to a site of the Voronoi tessellation and the corresponding Delaunay Triangulation defines the P2P overlay. A hierarchy of Voronoi diagrams is defined by exploiting clusters of objects paired with the same site of the Voronoi diagram. A new Voronoi diagram including the peers of the cluster is created so that the query resolution may be refined by a top down visit of the Voronoi hierarchy. The paper presents the proposed solution, analyses its complexity, and provides a set of experimental results.

Journal of Intelligent Manufacturing, 2013

In this paper we present an effective approach to perform formal verification of properties of in... more In this paper we present an effective approach to perform formal verification of properties of interest of production systems whose behavior is modeled through Stateflow diagrams. The approach hinges on a semantics of Stateflow diagrams given in terms of formulae of a metric temporal logic. The semantics has been implemented in a fully automated tool which allows users to define a wide range of properties of interest and then to check whether they hold for the system or not. We also point out an error in the design of the system that has been detected by applying the technique.

Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Software Paradigm Trends, 2014

We describe a business workflow case study with abnormal behavior management (i.e. recovery) and ... more We describe a business workflow case study with abnormal behavior management (i.e. recovery) and demonstrate how temporal logics and model checking can provide a methodology to iteratively revise the design and obtain a correct-by construction system. To do so we define a formal semantics by giving a compilation of generic workflow patterns into LTL and we use the bound model checker Zot to prove specific properties and requirements validity. The working assumption is that such a lightweight approach would easily fit into processes that are already in place without the need for a radical change of procedures, tools and people's attitudes. The complexity of formalisms and invasiveness of methods have been demonstrated to be one of the major drawback and obstacle for deployment of formal engineering techniques into mundane projects.