Four students from the Indian Institute of Technology – Jodhpur recently visited ECE to work on UBC’s smart grid. Over the course of their ten-week stay they advanced UBC’s research on Smart Buildings and Smart Grid Cyber Security.
ECE has been hosting students from IIT-Johdpur for three years. Students received financial support from both the Department and through research funds of each of the professors. Visits from IIT-Johdpur students contribute the ECE’s India Initiative. In partnership with a small group of corporate and academic organizations in India, the Department is co-developing new training and research programs in areas of mutual interest for the benefit of undergraduate students, graduate students and faculty. We are looking at globalizing and expanding the “Living Lab” concept beyond the UBC campus, both by engaging participants from India to contribute to living lab projects (ECE signature projects) here at UBC, and also by partnering with organizations in India to reproduce or implant the concept in institutions in India.
Cyber Security for Smart Grids
Critical infrastructure systems are increasingly becoming automated. This automation relies on management and control commands to be sent through some form of communication system. While electrical grid automation greatly improves the efficiency and reliability, it also exposes the infrastructure to new threats such as hackers taking control or disrupting the communication link.
Aniruddh Ramrakhyani and Yeravothula Rohit worked with Professors Jose Marti, Karthik Pattabiraman and K.D. Srivastava to create a mathematical model linking the electrical grid and the supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) communication monitoring system.. Using this platform Aniruddh and Yeravothula were able to simulate and characterize the effect of various cyber threats on the electrical grid. By analyzing the electrical grid performance, it is possible to detect tampering with the SCADA system and take protection measures before damage to the system occurs. Ongoing research will increase the number of SCADA system cyber attacks analyzed, and look into cyber protection measures for dealing with the attacks. Protecting critical infrastructure from hacking is of great interest and relevance to both government and industry and it will be an area of continued research for Professors Marti, Pattabiraman and Srivastava.
Distributed Multi-Resolution Time Series Database
For a building to become smart the behavior of the building (temperature fluctuation, air flow, energy use, lighting etc.) has to be monitored. This constant flow of data refines our understanding of how best to improve the building’s efficiency, but also creates a challenge in how to present and store the data. The vast amount of information generated from monitoring devices competes with the needs of people for communication network resources. This may lead to unacceptable delays when accessing the Internet.
Dhiraj Bhatt and Palak Samaiya worked with Professor Sathish Gopalakrishnan to create a cloud based network that stores commonly referenced low-resolution time data in the cloud and less referenced high-resolution data at the measurement node. In most instances people only need low-resolution data, for example, a building manager is most often interested in an overview of the building’s performance. Detailed information may only be needed from one or two locations. This project looks at database structures that would communicate general data to a central repository that could be accessed quickly by a large number of people. High-resolution data that is only occasionally needed would be stored locally and only transmitted on an as-needed basis. By strategically distributing the data in the network it is possible to meet user data requirements without flooding the communication network.
Smart buildings are only one of the situations where the amount of data generated could overwhelm a network unless new database structures are use. The database employed in this project, the Distributed Multi-Resolution Time Series Database, could improve any application where the flow of data can cause congestion and result in delay and a poor user experience. Ongoing research will look at metrics to assess how this strategy for communicating data can be designed to reduce delay and result in a more reliable system with a better user experience.
Aniruddh Ramrakhyani, Dhiraj Bhatt, Yeravothula Rohit and Palak Samaiya celebrating the completion of thier projects with Professors Sathish Gopalakrishnan, Karthik Pattabiraman, José Martí and KD Srivastava
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