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- De Montfort University
- 11 - Computer Science and Informatics
- Submitting institution
- De Montfort University
- Unit of assessment
- 11 - Computer Science and Informatics
- Summary impact type
- Technological
- Is this case study continued from a case study submitted in 2014?
- No
1. Summary of the impact
Cyber attacks against Industrial Control Systems (ICS) are increasing in frequency and severity. New Incident Response (IR) techniques developed by DMU have trained hundreds of participants from the UK military, Airbus, Deloitte, Nettitude and more. The new working practices have improved response performance in over 350 incidents, through increased technical confidence and situational awareness in staff. This work contributed to DMU being one of only 19 universities to be recognised as an Academic Centre of Excellence in Cyber Security Research by the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) and Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).
2. Underpinning research
DMU’s Cyber Technology Institute (CTI) provides world-leading research by delivering practical solutions for industrial issues to develop a smart, safe and secure cyberspace.
A common factor across our Cyber Security research is the strong industrial linkage and focus on organisational relevance, which is supported through the centre’s exceptionally strong Industrial Advisory Group (IAG), consisting of Airbus, BT, Deloitte UK and Rolls-Royce. The membership is formalised through a Memorandum of Understanding, and exercised through regular meetings to advise on research, joint research projects and the taught provision undertaken in the centre.
This work has been the primary focus of Prof. Helge Janicke, Dr Richard Smith and Dr Leandros Maglaras. Fundamental research has been performed through a number of research projects (e.g. AIR4ICS) underpinned by practical industrial/governmental collaborations (e.g. Cyber Training exercises for UK military). In recognition of our work within the ICS domain DMU was admitted as one of only 13 universities to the Research Institute for Trustworthy Inter-Connected Cyber Physical Systems (RITICS) funded by EPSRC/NCSC in 2018.
This body of work has seen a paradigm shift in the operational procedures used by IR teams. Traditional IT cyber security solutions are often not viable within an industrial operational technology landscape, due to both the technology and the personnel involved. Through creative approaches to working, DMU has developed techniques to improve the security posture of these complex systems while successfully integrating existing personnel and processes. Protection of Critical National Infrastructure has been at the heart of our research, ranging in scope from local-level single organisations up to global recommendations.
One of the major difficulties in the protection of ICS equipment is the difficulty quantifying the risk to such systems. Attacks against ICS are low-frequency, high-impact events and therefore there exist insufficient datasets to produce robust risk estimates. DMU’s work helps bridge the gap to produce more informed risk estimation through the development of synthetic environments used in Cyber Warfare and IR training exercises to act as proxy indicators of real attacks [R1]. Key to a successful cyber IR plan is management buy-in; however, industrial cyber security risk is often difficult to quantify to business leaders. The Simulated Critical Infrastructure Protection Scenarios (SCIPS) serious game has been developed, incorporating real-world learning objectives into an interactive game environment, to increase cyber situational awareness of senior managers within Critical Infrastructure organisations [R2]. Placing participants into unfamiliar roles and requiring them to make decisions to balance financial, production, time and reputational risk factors of an ongoing cyber attack provides a greater understanding of the cyber threat risks faced by organisations.
To improve the operational readiness of IR teams it is vital to ensure that the developed exercise scenarios provide a realistic experience. Assessments of how traditional IT security mechanisms perform in an operational technology environment have been undertaken, and where gaps exist potential solutions have been identified [R3]. IR teams often have limited experience within an industrial control environment, due in part to the dearth of training opportunities in an operational environment. These exercises enable participants to address this skill shortage. By fusing virtualised elements with real-world components, participants are able to gain hands-on understanding of these environments [R4]. The work has allowed the creation of new methodologies fusing IR techniques with industrial network topography to produce a new triage process. This new approach allows IR responders to optimise effort allocation and reduce time to containment [R5]. The work has grown to encompass new technologies, such as the Internet of Things [R6], that pose unique challenges to defenders.
A new forensic acquisition tool, created with Airbus, has been developed to improve the ability of investigators to accurately identify and analyse attacks against programmable logic controllers by allowing the forensic acquisition of live data from these industrial devices for the first time.
3. References to the research
The ICS-CSR conference proceedings papers have all been be peer reviewed by at least two members of the Programme Committee. Papers are selected based on their originality, timeliness, significance, relevance, and clarity of presentation. Distinguished papers, after further revisions, are published in the BCS special issue. The conference and proceedings have an international audience drawn from across Europe and the US.
[R1] Cook, A., Smith, R., Maglaras, L. and Janicke, H. (2016a) ‘Measuring the risk of cyber attack in industrial control systems’, 4th International Symposium for ICS & SCADA Cyber Security Research 2016 (ICS-CSR), 23–25 August 2016; http://dx.doi.org/10.14236/ewic/ics2016.12
[R2] Cook, A., Smith, R., Maglaras, L. and Janicke, H. (2016b) ‘Using gamification to raise awareness of cyber threats to critical national infrastructure’, 4th International Symposium for ICS & SCADA Cyber Security Research 2016 (ICS-CSR), 23–25 August 2016; http://dx.doi.org/10.14236/ewic/ics2016.10
[R3] Cook, A., Janicke, H., Maglaras, L. and Smith, R. (2017) ‘An assessment of the application of IT security mechanisms to industrial control systems’, International Journal of Internet Technology and Secured Transactions, 7(2): 144–174; https://doi.org/10.1504/IJITST.2017.087163
[R4] Hallaq, B. Nicholson, A., Smith, R.G. and Maglaras, L. (2018) ‘CYRAN: A hybrid cyber range for testing security on ICS/SCADA systems’, in M.A. Ferrag and A. Ahmim (eds) Security Solutions and Applied Cryptography in Smart Grid Communications, Hershey, PA: IGI Global, pp 226–241; ISBN 9781522518297; https://www.igi\-global.com/gateway/chapter/172681
[R5] Cook, A., Janicke, H., Smith, R. and Maglaras, L. (2017) ‘The industrial control system cyber defence triage process’, Computers & Security, 70: 467–481; https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cose.2017.07.009
[R6] Cook, A., Smith, R., Maglaras, L. and Janicke, H. (2018) ‘Managing incident response in the industrial Internet of Things’, International Journal of Internet Technology and Secured Transactions, 8(2): 251–276; https://doi.org/10.1504/IJITST.2018.093336
4. Details of the impact
(1) INDUSTRIAL IMPACT
The ICS work performed by the CTI has led to the recognition of DMU as an Academic Centre of Excellence in Cyber Security Research (ACE) by the NCSC and EPSRC, which includes a grant of GBP60,000 [C1]. DMU is one of only 19 ACEs in the country, the first ACE in the East Midlands and the joint-first post-92 university to gain this recognition.
Dr Richard Smith is also a full member NCSC’s Industrial Control System’s community of interest – open only to those with a demonstrable expertise within the field with a track record of impactful work for industry – and is currently leading a workstream on how organisational readiness of a critical infrastructure provider can be tested and exercised. Membership of the community of interest has also provided Dr Smith the opportunity to contribute to the NCSC cyber research problem book, used to inform research direction for cyber security projects nationwide. He has been invited to give keynote presentations at industrial events in the UK, Romania, Australia, Austria, the USA, Germany and France.
DMU has also been recognised as one of only two Airbus Academic Centres of Excellence in ICS cyber security in Europe [C2]. This has been realised in the form of an enhanced Knowledge Transfer Partnership, supported by Innovate UK, in Tools and Techniques for ICS/SCADA Digital Forensics, with Airbus Group supported by GBP225,000 funding. The work has generated a forensic memory acquisition tool used by Airbus workers on their factory floors to allow direct memory acquisition from industrial devices for the first time, increasing the chance of identification and mitigation of attacks against the company. Previously, suspect devices would simply be thrown away, losing valuable forensic information. Now, the evidence is extracted and stored for the investigative team [C3].
Cyber Warfare and incident response exercises have been used to enhance participants’ skillsets and change the way IR teams operate. The DMU Agile Incident Response for ICS (AIR4ICS) project, worth GBP250,000 with additional contributions in kind of GBP160,000 from Airbus, Rolls-Royce, BT and Limes Security, has produced new Agile methodologies and tools providing benefits for IR teams who have adapted their business practices [C4]. This modular framework was funded by the NCSC and allows organisations to choose which elements they feel can be best incorporated into their working practices. Organisations such as Nettitude have chosen to adopt practices and tools from AIR4ICS, such as the Sprint cycle, Incident backlog and Incident board which focus on communication and information sharing between team members and have seen a number of benefits. ‘The first is an increase in technical confidence of the participants, which has manifested itself in more confident decision making’ and ‘The improved situational awareness has assisted the management team and the SOC analysts to be more efficient’ [C5], and the UK military ‘On the exercise itself, there was a clear uplift in capability and performance … demonstrated in the feedback from the exercise assessors in both qualitative and quantitative terms’ [C6].
Cyber Warfare and Incident Response exercises designed, developed and delivered by DMU, for the UK Army, Navy and Air Force response teams in January 2016 and February, April, June, August, November and December 2017 have been used to improve the skills of 124 participants. These skills were then demonstrated and described during cyber exercises of up to 1,000 international participants from NATO countries [C6, C7]. Events during DMU CyberWeek in 2018 and 2019 and AIR4ICS which have trained 123 participants from 22 organisations including SMEs, NHS, local government, industry such as Emerson and Rolls-Royce. These events have utilised DMU’s state-of-the-art hybrid cyber range CYRAN [R4] to create realistic sandboxed cyber environments along with the new IR approaches to introduce new working practices for industry, such as at Nettitude where 11 staff were trained on the AIR4ICS techniques, who have since introduced them to their colleagues and adopted them within the organisation. The main benefits of adopting these techniques has been seen in task management and tracking, ‘the 15 Security Operations Centre staff have implemented a number of measures to improve the efficiency of the Nettitude SOC. These include SCRUM meetings and kanban boards. We have also introduced sprints into aspects of the platform, monitoring and IR operations’ [C5].
Valuable hands-on practical experience of the ICS equipment used in DMU’s CYRAN cyber range has had the added benefit of providing device penetration tests, identifying vulnerabilities for manufacturers to be used to inform their patch cycle. The work has also allowed the Red team participants, from Austria, Germany and Denmark, who were responsible for attacking the network, to use AIR4ICS techniques to increase the efficiency of their penetration testing service and therefore provide better security recommendations:
Our staff doing blue team benchmarking projects became certainly more efficient through the AIR4ICS contributions. Also, in cases where we support customers with incident response, the agile approach gives guidance yet does not bloat the activities like a formal process, so we certainly consider it useful for real-world projects. The value provided even for senior OT security staff as in our case, where realistic attacks lead to realistic responses is substantial, we are glad to have joined the consortium as our invested resources have had a good knowledge-return already. [C8]
To raise awareness of the risk posed to ICS by cyber threats and to increase the understanding of the unique environment in which they exist, SCIPS exercises have been performed at both private events, such as for UK Cyber Defence Academy, and at public events like DMU CyberWeek 2018 and 2019. Some 104 participants have successfully taken part in these SCIPS exercises, including people from organisations including Thales, Rolls-Royce and Emerson. Successful identification of industrial cyber risk increased by 75% and 90% of respondents registering an increased cyber awareness of the threats to ICS [C9].
DMU’s expertise in the area of IR and security operations has been recognised by Deloitte with GBP20,000 funding provided to create a new research Security Operations Centre that will be used to define more effective defensive offerings in the future for Deloitte: ‘It is essential that when providing advice to our clients we are informed by research that is subjected to rigor and scrutiny. Shaping research with DMU in the SOC allows us to develop solutions that address organisations’ most complex cyber security challenges’ [C10].
(2) SOCIETAL IMPACT
DMU has changed the perception of industrial risk within the cyber security and engineering community. Cyber Security attack demonstration devices developed by in conjunction with Airbus and Claroty have successfully been included at major international events where previously there was no ICS representation. These include the first ever ICS ‘capture the flag’ event at RSA 2018, an event attended by over 25,000 people. Some 250 participants were trained and reported an increased understanding of issues within ICS security at the RSA 2018 international conference [C3]. Additional demonstrator devices developed by DMU have also been presented at international events including DEFCON25 ICS Village, the Hong Kong GREAT festival of Innovation, BruCon (Belgium’s largest hacking conference), the IET/BCS Turing EngTalk and DMU have hosted events at their Leicester campus for participants from organisations such as British Gypsum and Siemens Rail.
5. Sources to corroborate the impact
[C1] https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/information/academic\-centres\-excellence\-cyber\-security\-research
[C2] https://www.airbus.com/innovation/open\-innovation/airbus\-cyber\-innovation.html
[C3] Testimonial from Head of Cyber Innovation and Scouting, Airbus.
[C4] AIR4ICS Framework document.
[C5] Testimonial from Technical & Security Operations Manager, Nettitude.
[C6] Testimonial from UK Army Major, UK StratCom Joint User, Cyber Operations.
[C7] Cyber Exercise Report, forming part of PhD thesis for Allan Cook.
[C8] Testimonial from Managing Director, Limes Security.
[C9] PDF of Internal CyberWeek18 Report.
- Submitting institution
- De Montfort University
- Unit of assessment
- 11 - Computer Science and Informatics
- Summary impact type
- Societal
- Is this case study continued from a case study submitted in 2014?
- No
1. Summary of the impact
The Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) is the oldest professional computing organisation with over 100,000 international members. Research conducted by Flick at DMU in collaboration with the ACM’s Committee on Professional Ethics informed the rewriting of the ACM’s Code of Ethics, which members of ACM are mandated to follow. The Code is considered so significant and relevant in the field that it has also been adopted by other professional organisations such as the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP).
With professional organisation members publicly held to the Code, it has been used as a benchmark for judging emerging technologies in terms of their ethical compliance, and to publicly challenge technologies that might be ethically problematic, such as in the Google Project Dragonfly case [C10].
2. Underpinning research
The research conducted by Catherine Flick at DMU involved large-scale dialogues and surveys with experts in ethics, law, others interested in the ethical aspects of computing, the membership of the ACM, and the interested public all around the world, in order to understand the societal and ethical landscape of expectations of an international professional organisation in computing.
Using the 1992 ACM Code of Ethics as a starting point, a series of consultations with an expert taskforce (TF), including Flick, were conducted by the Executive Committee (EC) of the ACM’s Code Update Team to start the revision of the Code in 2016. The first draft was published publicly by Brinkman et al. in the Communications of the ACM ( CACM) (‘Making a positive impact: updating the ACM code of ethics’; https://doi.org/10.1145/3015149), and invited feedback from both members and non-members by email [R6]. After this initial exercise, Flick was asked to participate as a member of the 7-member EC as the only non-American in order to provide a European perspective on the obligations of the Code and to conduct the significant fieldwork required for the next stage. The chair of the EC and co-chair of the ACM Committee on Professional Ethics, writes:
We knew of the work of Dr Flick from her presentations on ethics of emerging technologies and responsible innovation at conferences such as ETHICOMP, published papers on informed consent in IT and ethics of emerging technologies. [The EC] had clear evidence of her skill and knowledge in the area, of her international background experience, so it was worth ACM’s effort to support her international travel to attend meetings in the USA to draft the Code [and] review and evaluate thousands of suggested modifications. [C1]
Prior research conducted by Flick was specifically used to inform the language and intent of the Code from this point onwards, particularly work on informed consent [R1] and ethics of emerging technologies [R2].
Responses to the first draft were collected and analysed by the EC, including Flick, in consultation with TF experts; it was at this point she was also asked to redraft specific sections of the Code, most notably Principle 1.5, which turned into Principle 1.6 in R3 onwards. The EC held another exercise in 2017 to incorporate the feedback into a new draft, which was once again published with commentary in CACM [R3]. Members of the ACM as well as interested members of the public were invited to comment via a message board. And this time again, Flick was involved in collecting and analysing the data as part of the EC exercise to revise based on the feedback. A third draft was developed and published in early 2018, alongside a qualitative survey emailed to all members that had opted into email contact with the ACM (n = ~75,000, responses = ~4,500) [R4]. The task of qualitatively analysing this enormous set of data was completed by Flick, the results of which were then used by the EC to draft the final version of the Code. This final version was published openly and posted as a booklet with the July 2018 issue of CACM to ~75,000 ACM members [R5]. In this way, Flick’s qualitative analysis work directly contributed to the final form of the Code.
From the testimonial of the chair of the EC and co-chair of the ACM Committee on Professional Ethics:
Dr Flick personally sorted through, organized, and analyzed [the] comments, including three rounds of expert, general public, and member comments, to produce summary sets of documents that were used at the next stage of the Code rewrite meetings. This analysis highlighted some of the elements that we might have otherwise missed, and particularly picked up subtle nuances that were helpful in redrafting aspects of the Code. […] Another of her more significant contributions that is directly evident within the context of the Code is Principle 1.6 [original rewrite by Flick in R3, then amended in R4 and R5] which originally had to do with copyright, patents and intellectual property [as can be seen in [2.1] as Principle 1.5]. […] She was given the task to completely rewrite and internationalize that element so that it would not talk about laws and standards that were US-centric. [C1]
3. References to the research
[R1] Flick, C. (2016) ‘Informed consent and the Facebook emotional manipulation study’, Research Ethics, 12(1): 14–28; https://doi.org/10.1177/1747016115599568
[R2] Stahl, B.C., Timmermans, J. and Flick, C. (2017) ‘Ethics of emerging information and communication technologies: on the implementation of responsible research and innovation’, Science and Public Policy, 44(3): 361–381; http://doi.org/10.1093/scipol/scw069
[R3] Brinkman, B., Flick, C., Gotterbarn, D., Miller, K., Vazansky, K. and Wolf, M.J. (2017) ‘Listening to professional voices: Draft 2 of the ACM code of ethics and professional conduct’, Communications of the ACM, 60(5): 105–111; https://doi.org/10.1145/3072528
[R4] Gotterbarn, D., Bruckman, A., Flick, C., Miller, K. and Wolf, M.J. (2018) ‘ACM code of ethics: a guide for positive action’, Communications of the ACM, 61(1): 121–128; https://doi.org/10.1145/3173016
[R5] Gotterbarn, D., Brinkman, B., Flick, C., Kirkpatrick, M.S., Miller, K., Vazansky, K. and Wolf, M.J. (2018) ‘ACM Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct’, New York: Association of Computing Machinery; https://www.acm.org/binaries/content/assets/about/acm\-code\-of\-ethics\-booklet.pdf
4. Details of the impact
100,000+ ACM members around the world must abide by the Code, which is a condition of their membership and has a strong enforcement policy that is called on if violations are found. Consequences for breaking the Code can result in prohibition from attending ACM conferences or publishing with ACM. ACM publications and conferences are at the top in the field, and are significant publication and dissemination spaces for both academic and industry research, so this provides a significant incentive to take note of and abide by the Code. The Code has been translated into Chinese and Spanish. The acceptance and use of the final version of the Code not only by the leadership and membership of the ACM, but by other professional organisations, educators, computing professionals and others, shows the impact of Flick’s underpinning research and her direct contributions, such as in Principle 1.6, to shaping the final version of the Code [C1].
New members have cited the ACM Code of Ethics as the reason they joined, and existing members have claimed the updated Code as a reason why they are proud of being members of the ACM, for example @andihyson on Twitter stating ‘Proud to be new member of The Association for Computing Machinery @TheOfficialACM – The code of conduct [sic] swung it for me’ [C2]. This shows the resonance of the Code for professionals who might otherwise have been reluctant to join the ACM.
The IFIP, which represents over 54 countries’ professional societies of computing-related industries, is adopting the ACM Code of Ethics as their code of ethics, to exist alongside the national professional societies’ codes of ethics [C1]. Other professional organisations have adopted the Code for their own members’ use, showing that it has broader appeal than just the ACM [C3]. These institutions are, like the ACM, using the Code as a benchmark for their members’ professionalism:
Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence
Institute for the Certification of Computing Professionals
Association for Computational Linguistics
Association for Software Testing
Conference series (outside those of the ACM) are also beginning to ask that papers submitted to them and conference attendees abide by the Code, for example the Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing (EMNLP) and Supercomputing (SC) conference series [C3]. These conferences are open not just to academia, but to industry and government as well.
Educational institutions around the world use the ACM’s Code of Ethics as a basis to teach ethics to school-age, as well as undergraduate and postgraduate computing students. A number of computer science programmes are using the new Code of Ethics in their curricula, with a quarter of technology ethics courses with publicly accessible curricula that teach professional ethics explicitly studying the ACM’s Code of Ethics [C4]. In the professional realm, the new Code has inspired people not at all involved in its development to give talks on it to their peers, or use it in continuing professional development, showing the importance to these professionals in not only internalising the new Code but disseminating it themselves to their peers, for example, its use in a DFKompetens Strategic Infosec course [C5], and presentations at USENIX SREcon18 [C6], RubyConf 2018 [C7]. The chair of the EC and co-chair of the ACM Committee on Professional Ethics states that:
expected further impact includes in education, with the ACM’s technical curricula being updated to show the relationship between technical concepts and the principles of the ACM Code of Ethics. The ACM technical curricula include computer science, information science, and software engineering, and are promoted by the BCS (Chartered Institute for IT) as part of its Skills Framework for the Information Age, for university level and professional education. [C1]
On social media, the ACM Code is regularly used to question organisational practices (Twitter search ‘ACM Code of Ethics’) – even of the ACM itself, for example when they signed a letter in opposition to the OSTP zero embargo proposal in the US (against open access publishing): ‘How does @TheOfficialACM signing this statement align with the @ACM_Ethics Code of Ethics? In particular “3.1 Ensure that the public good is the central concern during all professional computing work?”’ [C8]. The ACM subsequently retracted their statement and submitted a more nuanced response due to ‘concerns from our members’ [C9].
The new Code was used by Google employees to adjudicate the ethics of the Google project Dragonfly, which was cancelled after its ethics violations were brought to light [C1, C10], closing (to Google) an advertising market of 772,000,000 Chinese internet users. This shows that although the Code is aimed at an individual level, it has been used as leverage when groups of employees are ACM members and/or feel the Code represents their ethical and moral obligations [C1]. Other organisations such as Guna SPA (Italy) have used the Code to inform their practices and KPIs, or have adopted the Code internally with assistance from the Committee chair [C1].
5. Sources to corroborate the impact
[C1] Testimonial – Co-Chair ACM Committee on Professional Ethics
[C2] A collection of tweets stating pride in being a member of the ACM due to the Code or that they joined the ACM because of the Code.
[C3] Links to organisations’ Codes of Ethics:
Association for Software Testing: https://associationforsoftwaretesting.org/code\-of\-ethics/
Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence: https://aaai.org/Conferences/code\-of\-ethics\-and\-conduct.php
Institute for the Certification of Computing Professionals: https://www.iccp.org/code\-of\-ethics.html
Association for Computational Linguistics: https://www.aclweb.org/portal/content/acl\-code\-ethics
International Federation for Information Processing: http://ifiptc9.org/blog/2020/09/24/ifip\-code\-of\-ethics/
[C4] Fiesler, C., Garrett, N. and Beard, N. (2020) ‘What do we teach when we teach tech ethics? A syllabi analysis’, in the 51st ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE ’20), March 11–14, 2020, Portland, OR, USA, pp 289–295; doi: 10.1145/3328778.3366825 [Conference proceedings available at: https://dl.acm.org/doi/proceedings/10.1145/3328778\]
[C5] @stromsjo: I used the #ethics code for my @DFKompetens Strategic Infosec course in September. https://twitter.com/stromsjo/status/1067749616710504450?s=20;
[C6] https://www.usenix.org/conference/srecon18europe/presentation/schlossnagle\-0 video available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjMo1mgSMDo
[C7] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkHhBpO6Kzo
[C8] https://twitter.com/tnhh/status/1207713258184028160;
[C9] https://www.acm.org/about\-acm/statement\-regarding\-open\-access
[C10] https://theintercept.com/2018/08/16/google\-china\-crisis\-staff\-dragonfly/
- Submitting institution
- De Montfort University
- Unit of assessment
- 11 - Computer Science and Informatics
- Summary impact type
- Technological
- Is this case study continued from a case study submitted in 2014?
- No
1. Summary of the impact
Research at DMU in modelling and optimisation has led to worldwide impact by supporting the development of security and operations policies for the global air transport industry. These have enhanced the security screening process of millions of passengers travelling daily through nearly 1,200 international airports. This was achieved through the contributions of Dr Mario Gongora as international adviser, where he disseminated the relevant research outcomes supporting security; leading to an active contribution in the development of the Smart Security programme guidelines disseminated across all airports around the world by the International Air Transport Association (IATA) and Airports Council International (ACI) and steering the industry to develop suitable solutions.
2. Underpinning research
This research resulted from the work that Dr Gongora’s team conducted in 2000, tracing back the origin of genes from observing only the external traits of individuals. Starting in 2003, and in collaboration with a multidisciplinary research team including geneticists, outcomes from research developed in gene behaviour identification from the developmental traits in animals provided novel modelling tools for ‘tracing back’ behaviours in ‘opaque processes’ [R4]. At the core of the modelling and optimisation team from the Institute of Artificial Intelligence (IAI) at DMU, this work generated a branch focusing the same technologies to tracing back customer behaviour from generic data from large venues. This was collated with behaviour modelling and optimisation of operations and resources and was first validated in a commercial application with the collaboration of Birmingham Airport [R5].
The commercial exploitation potential became obvious and filled a critical need in the air transport industry -- to be able to enhance security as well as customer service -- which had been seriously conflicting objectives since the tragic events of 9/11. A great deal of work had been done for other industry processes where quality and cost also conflict, but were not as critical as with the safety (life) and screening of passengers, and not applicable to this problem.
The success of our application, with further validation using data from other airports and venues, attracted the interest of industry and investors who, after thorough due diligence in 2008, provided seed funding for the creation of a spin-off company (Venuesim Ltd) to commercialise the application of this research. One condition of the investors in the creation of the company was an embargo on any publications (academic or otherwise) of the research directly related to the development of the company’s products.
Aside from this publication embargo, the team continued the research in state-of-the-art Computational Intelligence to support operations modelling and optimisation. The highest profile publications are in areas diverging from those under commercial exploitation, but there is still research closely related which continued to build on the impact and fed the company with new technologies to provide updated impact throughout the impact period [R3, R2].
The underpinning research remains active to maintain the state of the art of our contribution and provide repeated advances to the industry. For instance, in the case of airports and the original products commercialised by the company, forecasting has reached saturation point (e.g. every commercial product now reaches easily 95% consistent accuracy). The continued impact of the research is currently in novel contributions to dynamic and resilient optimisation. [R1, R6].
3. References to the research
The publications were all in international research journals or conferences, all having high standards of peer review. In particular R2 was submitted and published in Q1 high impact journals (in our discipline at time of submission), both reaching a wide audience in the research field. R1, R3, R4, R5 were published and presented in the top 3 international conferences in the field of AI. R6 was published in an internationally recognised journal and conference in a multidisciplinary field.
[R1] Chitty, D.M., Yang, S. and Gongora, M. (2017) ‘Considering flexibility in the evolutionary dynamic optimisation of airport security lane schedules’, Proceedings of the 2017 IEEE Symposium Series on Computational Intelligence; DOI: 10.1109/SSCI.2017.8285177
[R2] Miller, S., Gongora, M., Garibaldi, J. and John, R. (2011) ‘Interval type-2 fuzzy modelling and stochastic search for real-world inventory Management’, Journal Soft Computing, 16: 1447–1459; https://doi.org/10.1007/s00500\-012\-0848\-y
[R3] Miller, S., Gongora, M. and John, R. (2010) ‘Optimising resource plans using an interval type-2 fuzzy model’, Proceedings of Fourth International Workshop on Genetic and Evolutionary Fuzzy Systems (GEFS 2010), Mieres, Asturias, Spain, March 2010; DOI: 10.1109/GEFS.2010.5454158
[R4] Gongora, M. and Rodas, M.C. (2009) ‘Analysis of organized asymmetry development using artificial cellular differentiation models’, Proceedings of the IEEE Symposium Series on Computational Intelligence, Nashville, TN, USA, April 2009; DOI: 10.1109/ESDIS.2009.4938998
[R5] Gongora, M. and Ashfaq, W. (2006) ‘Analysis of passenger movement at Birmingham International Airport’, IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation, CEC 2006, in IEEE WCCI 2006, 16–21 July 2006, Vancouver, pp 1339–1345; DOI: 10.1109/CEC.2006.1688464
[R6] Eaton, J., Yang, S. and Gongora, M.A. (2017) ‘Ant colony optimization for simulated dynamic multi-objective railway junction rescheduling’, IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems, 18(11): 2980–2992; DOI: 10.1109/TITS.2017.2665042
4. Details of the impact
The details present how, between 1 August 2013 and the end of 2019, Dr Gongora’s research at DMU has had significant impact in the security processes of the air travel industry by actively contributing to IATA’s and ACI’s efforts in guiding airports on maximising security while minimising disruption to passengers, and sustaining significant growth in air travel. This contribution includes security procedures, personnel training and the use of forecasting and optimisation tools to make efficient plans (e.g. rostering) according to throughput management and modelling, as well as guiding the R&D of manufacturers to provide state-of-the-art equipment.
After the tragic events of September 2001, airport security became challenging, creating conflicting processes among different airports and authorities, with no international agreement in place. The industry faced a serious conflict between operating safely while minimising costs and maintaining a high level of customer service. At the time, the team lead by Dr Mario Gongora were maturing their research in holistic behaviour modelling and process optimisation.
To contextualise this research, the team approached airports which quickly recognised the value of this work to allow growth in operations and enhance customer service without compromising security (e.g. with Birmingham Airport, R5). These trials resulted in Dr Gongora and his team becoming renowned worldwide as leading experts in the field.
As a result of Dr Gongora’s research and recognition as mentioned above, he was invited to join IATA’s ‘Checkpoint of the Future’ programme (COF) Expert Group (made up of a select number of worldwide experts in airport security and optimisation of operations) to work with their advisory group (made of airport/airline managers and international transport authority executives). The COF evolved into the Smart Security programme when IATA and ACI joined forces to bring their efforts into a single global programme from early 2014.
The contribution of our research to the global air transport industry focuses mainly on the continuous development of the roadmap for the future of airport operations, taking cognisance of the criticality of security, the technologies and processes required to achieve this. The roadmap is delivered via continuously updated guidance documents to which Dr Gongora contributes as part of a select group of international knowledge exchange partners. These documents have emerged as the de facto standard for modern airport operations and security. They are used by IATA’s 300 airline members, ACI’s airport members (over 1,900 worldwide) as well as airport regulators (in 176 countries), authorities, industry and screening equipment manufacturers [C1, C2, C3].
These guidelines have shaped the evolution of airport security from inefficient, inconsistent (across airports and countries) and disruptive measures, to well-defined and consistent processes in the screening of hand baggage, managing of security point operations and appropriate allocation of resources that have significantly enhanced both security and passenger experience while allowing significant growth in the traffic since its inception (see p 18 of C5, where Keflavik Airport went from queues to the parking lot in 2015 to 99% passengers queuing for less than 10 minutes in 2017, despite much higher numbers).
The impact has affected not only airport processes but in turn has driven the market and developments in industry that follow the evolution in requirements for equipment to support these streamlined and robust operations. The blueprints and guides have enabled regulations and driven enhanced and efficient developments in screening technology (e.g. article 2 in C5).
Dr Gongora’s team regularly contribute to industry events, e.g. Airport IT and Security conference in Amsterdam, December 2018, where Dr Gongora was invited to talk about operations optimisation and resilience to the global airport community [C7, C8]. Dr Fabio Caraffini was invited to IATA/ACI’s NEXTT (New Experience Travel Technologies) event in June 2019 at EUROCONTROL Headquarters, Brussels, to plan for Air Transport Security – 2040 and Beyond.
In January 2019 Dr Gongora was appointed as the Adviser for Artificial Intelligence to the Latin American community of Risk and Security Management (COLADCA with over 15 member countries and over 2,000 members and companies) [C6], contributing to the security policies for Latin America.
During 2020 Dr. Gongora with his team at DMU contributed significantly to ACI’s efforts to support airport operations during the pandemic as well as recovery during the gradual easing of restrictions. The most significant impact of this contribution was the latest ACI Handbook: “Low-Cost Low-Tech Optimization Measures for Security Operations Handbook” which identifies solutions and wider applications of simpler and more affordable security initiatives, to ensure optimal use of resources amid complex times and increasing regulatory demands [C9].
5. Sources to corroborate the impact
[C1] Reference letter from IATA HQ office in Geneva to corroborate membership of the expert group and subsequently becoming one of a select members to provide significant contribution to the blueprints and guidelines (doc: Mario Gongora reference.pdf).
[C2] Full document of the Smart Security Blueprint 2017, to illustrate the work where we provided a significant input as part of a small select team as indicated in C1 (doc: Smart_Security_Blueprint_v1_2017.pdf).
[C3] Letter from ACI confirming participation, commitment and work done up to date following IATA’s handover, as well as the impact the research has had on this contribution.
[C4] One of many ACI’s Implementation Guides acknowledging DMU as contributor; this can be found on p 4 ‘Contributions’ (doc: Smart-Security-ACBS-CT-Implementation-Guide-v0.1.pdf).
[C5] Two international articles from the industry to complement C4, confirming the critical and worldwide impact this has had in the airport industry and their equipment manufacturers.
The article in one of the international Leading Airport Magazine, ACI EUROPE Airport Business: ‘Life in the Fast Lane’ tells the point of view of airports and stresses how critical is this optimisation and automation; p 4 of this article mentions the early adopters (hundreds by now) with airports such as Amsterdam Airport Schiphol, London Gatwick, Kansai Airport in Japan, Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson, Chicago O’Hare and Toronto Pearson Airports in North America. On p 18, the case study of Keflavik Airport shows how basically 9,000,000 people (passengers) have significantly benefited as the result of following these guidelines in 2017 alone. In URL: https://www.tsi-mag.com/life-in-the-fast-lane/
The article in Transport Security International (ASI: the only dedicated global journal for airport and airline security and regarded as “must-read” by most professionals): ‘The Arrival of Rotating CT…’ confirms from the equipment manufacturers point of view the impact the ACI guidelines and the use of AI have had in the R&D roadmap of the industry to provide the appropriate equipment to airports. In URL: http://www.airport-business.com/2019/11/arrival-rotating-ct-passenger-checkpoint-undoubtedly-defining-moment/
[C6] Letter from COLADCA inviting and appointing Dr Mario Gongora as AI advisor for the Latin American Risk and Safety community, recognising our impact on the air transport industry (doc: CE-230 DR.GONGORA).
[C7] Website of Airport IT & Sec conferences, Mario Gongora, speaker Airport IT & Sec. profiles saved by them in URL: https://www.internationalairportreview.com/speaker_profile/68762/mario-a-gongora/
[C8] Website, industry listing of speakers in Amsterdam. Speaker at Airport IT and Security Conf. Dec2018 at Schiphol. In10times.com URL: https://10times.com/profile/mario-gongora-28299260
[C9] ACI’s 2020 “Low-Cost Low-Tech Optimization Measures for Security Operations Handbook” released at the end of 2020 to airports worldwide. In the “Contributions” page DMU is acknowledged along other high-profile international experts and Knowledge Transfer contributors. (Confidential, available on request)
- Submitting institution
- De Montfort University
- Unit of assessment
- 11 - Computer Science and Informatics
- Summary impact type
- Societal
- Is this case study continued from a case study submitted in 2014?
- No
1. Summary of the impact
The introduction of sex robots into society presents a new and dangerous threat to the humanity of women and girls as they are promoted as ‘equivalent to’ or ‘better than’ them. Sex robots also present a new form of sexual harassment of women and presents threats to children in the form of child sex-abuse dolls. Richardson’s work in these areas has informed policy and recommendations through the development of regulations on sex robots in the UK and USA. The research has also been used to inform public debate on sex robots through advocacy and awareness raising by feminist and women’s rights organisation in the UK, France, USA and Australia.
2. Underpinning research
Richardson’s work is a critical study of robots and AI as ‘relational others’. For over 20 years, Richardson has charted the rise of new fields of social, therapeutic and sex robots. Advocates propose that robots are capable of substituting interpersonal relationships: friend, companion, therapist and female lover. Richardson’s work argues that this promotes a harmful culture, where relationships are devalued, and women become reducible to the role they play in male sexual gratification rather than as human beings with equal status. Richardson’s work is among the first of its kind to examine social robots through the prism of attachment studies. Richardson’s book Challenging Sociality [R1] laid out arguments for and against robots as therapeutic aids for children with autism spectrum conditions, questioning theories that suggest these children lack empathy or connection to humans, preferring objects and abstract systems instead. Moreover, an autism and attachment studies approach to social robotics, with its understanding of child development, trauma, bonding, learning, emotion regulation and cognitive and linguistic development, does not support arguments for robots as substitute attachments. Rather, the science of attachment warns us against normalising robots (or other humanmade entities) as substitute ‘intimate attachment others’ [R2, R3].
This work laid the foundation for a critique of the harms of social robotics, and subsequently led into a feminist approach to sex robots that take the form of women, children and infants. The case against sex robots was outlined in the 2015 paper ‘The Asymmetrical “Relationship”: Parallels Between Prostitution and the Development of Sex Robots’ [R4], which showed how robots were promoted to men as substitutes for relationships with women, and modelled on a commercial transaction. Classical approaches to the sex industry see it as a ‘commercial exchange of services’ but survivor accounts and feminist research evidences it as a form of sex inequality that allows men who buy sex to respond to prostituted women without empathy. This absence of empathy is a problem for supporting healthy attachments and relationships between men and women, but its existence formed the basis of arguments for sex robots for men. To date, there are only a few examples of male sex robots.
Sex robots are an emerging technology but there are significant connections to sex dolls. First, hyperrealist female sex dolls have been around since the 1990s, and the dolls are the physical embodiment of sex robots. Statistically speaking, sex dolls are part of sexual fetish communities bought primarily by men. Doll users portray their interactions as ‘relationships’, behaviours replicated by sex robot users. In her book [R1], Richardson termed this as a ‘narcissistic relationship’. Moreover, Richardson’s work emphasises how sex inequality is the basis of female sexual objectification. This is translated into a wider cultural context shaping developments online and in robotics and AI, a significant proportion of which is illegal and includes prostitution and sex trafficking, child sexual exploitation, non-consenting or violent pornography, choking, revenge porn, upskirting, voyeurism, underage sexting, online grooming, and slave auctions. From this work, Richardson published paper R4 which also formed the basis for the Campaign Against Sex Robots (CASR) which was subsequently created in September 2015 and was met with a global debate, as described in section 4.
In further research, the 2016 paper ‘Sex Robot Matters: Slavery, the Prostituted, and the Rights of Machines’ [R5] outlined the first ethical framework against sex robots that is rooted in attachment studies (developed in R1, R2 and R3) and abolitionist feminism (developed from R4). This framework is underscored by an ethical commitment to women’s humanity, defence of mutual human relationship, and protection of children.
3. References to the research
Of the below outputs, items R1, R2, R3 and R5 have been through rigorous peer-review before publication. Of note, Richardson is the editor of the special issue for item R3, and item R5 has been within the 20 articles most viewed for the Journal’s entire catalogue. Item R4 led to the development of the Campaign Against Sex Robots (CASR) in 2015 and has received over 440,000 page views as of December 2020.
[R1] Richardson, K. (2018) Challenging Sociality: An Anthropology of Robots, Autism, and Attachment (Social and Cultural Studies of Robots and AI), Cham: Palgrave Macmillan; ISBN 9783319747538
[R2] Richardson, K., Coeckelbergh, M., Wakunuma, K., Billing, E., Ziemke, T., Gomez, P., Vanderborght, B. and Belpaeme, T. (2018) ‘Robot enhanced therapy for children with autism (DREAM): A social model of autism’, IEEE Technology and Society Magazine, 37(1): 30–39; https://doi.org/10.1109/MTS.2018.2795096
[R3] Richardson, K. (2019) ‘The human relationship in the ethics of robotics: A call to Martin Buber’s I and Thou’, AI & Society, 34(1): 75–82; https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146\-017\-0699\-2
[R4] Richardson, K. (2015) ‘The asymmetrical “relationship”: Parallels between prostitution and the development of sex robots’, SIGCAS Computers & Society, 45(3): 290–293. [Published on the ACM Digital Library as a special issue of the ACM SIGCAS newsletter.] https://doi.org/10.1145/2874239.2874281
[R5] Richardson, K. (2016) ‘Sex robot matters: Slavery, the prostituted, and the rights of machines’, IEEE Technology and Society Magazine, 35(2): 46–53; https://doi.org/10.1109/MTS.2016.2554421
GRANTS
[G1] EU Framework 7 (April 2014–September 2018), ‘DREAM (Development of Robots Enhanced Therapy for Children with Autism)’; https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/611391
4. Details of the impact
(1) INFORMING PUBLIC DEBATE AND AWARENESS RAISING
The launch of the CASR led to international debate on the issue of sex robots, women, children and society. Media outlets including Newsnight, BBC News, Fox News, Channel 4 News and Netflix featured Richardson and her work [C1]. This campaign work has gone on to reshape feminist and women’s rights organisations that have traditionally campaigned on issues of domestic and sexual violence, the gender pay gap and legal protection for children and their care. These groups include Prostitution Education and Research (US), Collective Shout (Australia), FiLiA, CEASE and NotBuyingIt (UK) and RadicalGirlsss (France) [C2, C3, C4, C5].
This has led to each of these groups putting sex robot technology on their campaigning agendas (e.g. CEASE [C5]). This has included featuring the work of Richardson on their websites, campaigning remit and at events. For example, the CEO of FiLiA has stated the significance of Richardson’s work ‘as it is important for women’s rights groups to understand the impact of these new technologies on women and girls … As a result of Prof. Richardson’s work, we can’t ignore sex robots and it has now become a part of our campaigning remit’ [C4]. NotBuyingIt also stated that the CASR has ‘helped to raise our awareness of this field and its significant ramifications … we routinely feature CASR’s research and insights in our social media, newsletter and other platforms (that reach at least 3,000 followers) … and has provided us with a useful tool to raise the current threats to women’ [C2]. From these associations, Richardson organised an online international workshop titled Sex Tech, Robots & AI: A Feminist Response (4 July 2020), which featured speakers from ten feminist organisations, and over 200 participants, and the CASR has been instrumental in bringing about this change and received positive feedback [C6].
Finally, as a result of the CASR profile, a group in Houston, Texas, called Elijah Rising successfully campaigned to close down a ‘sex doll brothel’ [C7]. The group used arguments prepared by Richardson in their Change.com petition statement and achieved over 13,000 supporters.
(2) REGULATIONS ON SEX ROBOTS IN THE USA
In the US, Richardson was contacted by Rep. Daniel M. Donovan Jr. who drafted the CREEPER Act of 2017 (H.R. 4655 – CREEPER Act of 2017) [C8, C9] to halt the development of paedophilic robots, for Richardson to provide written evidence for this. This law achieved a pass in the House of Representatives but was not approved in the Senate [C8, C9]. The tenets of the CREEPER Act have gone on to form the basis for new legislation and has recently been revived by Rep. Vern Buchanan in September 2020 (H.R.8236 – CREEPER Act 2.0) [C10].
5. Sources to corroborate the impact
[C1] Sample of Media Coverage PDF.
[C2] Testimonial from CEO of NotBuyingIt.
[C3] Testimonial from Co-Foundress of RadicalGirlsss.
[C4] Testimonial from CEO of FiLiA.
[C5] Testimonial from CEO of the Campaign to End All Sexual Exploitation (CEASE).
[C6] Sample of responses from participants at Sex Tech, Robots and AI: A feminist response event held on 4 July 2020.
[C7] Successful petition to close down a sex doll brothel in Houston, Texas, cites Richardson’s work and the campaign; https://www.change.org/p/elijah\-rising\-keep\-robot\-brothels\-out\-of\-houston
[C8] Press release on CREEPER legislation by Republican Senator; https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/new\-york\-congressmans\-creeper\-act\-would\-ban\-sales\-of\-child\-sex\-dolls\-in\-us
[C9] H.R. 4655 – CREEPER Act of 2017; https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th\-congress/house\-bill/4655
[C10] H.R.8236 – CREEPER Act 2.0; https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th\-congress/house\-bill/8236?q=%7B%22search%22%3A%5B%22H.R.8236%22%5D%7D&s=2&r=1