Digitally Sovereign Business Models
Siraj Anand
Ph.D. Candidate, IEBIS Department, University of Twente.
The Internet has emerged as a transformative force, enabling global communication and information sharing. With increasing reliance on the Internet for social interactions and business transactions, there's a need to address security and data management. While cybersecurity is often considered an IT issue, a truly secure and resilient Internet ecosystem is established by the organizations' controllable, accountable and transparent processes and resilient infrastructure. Our work explores data governance in the Internet ecosystem and aims to develop a secure-by-design system called ``Digitally Sovereign" Internet or Responsible Internet. By analyzing market dynamics and incentives, we highlight the advantages of a Controllable, Accountable, and Transparent Internet for businesses. We also explore business models for a Responsible Internet ecosystem, fostering sustainable, secure and interoperable inter-networking. Our research seeks to help establish a robust Internet that safeguards shared assets, enabling businesses to thrive while responsibly managing digital resources and services.
Siraj Anand completed his B.Tech. in Computer Science from the National Institute of Technology (India), He worked as a project engineer for a service company working as a resource for Microsoft cloud project (Azure). After serving in his first job for 2 years, he completed his MBA in Business Economics from the University of Delhi (India). He landed in PwC India after his Masters, working as an associate Technology Consultant for the Cybersecurity group. He joined the University of Twente as a Ph.D. in September 2022, in the CATRIN project. His research mainly focuses on rational decision-making for businesses in the cybersecurity domain.
The Heterogeneous Fleet Risk-Constrained Vehicle Routing Problem in Humanitarian Logistics
Robert van Steenbegen
Ph.D. Candidate, IEBIS Department, University of Twente.
While distributing essential supplies in volatile environments, humanitarian transport is often exposed to threats such as attacks. To mitigate the negative consequences of attacks, we introduce the heterogeneous fleet risk-constrained vehicle routing problem (HFRCVRP), in which we aim to minimize transportation costs and the expected loss of getting robbed. An Adaptive Large Neighborhood Search (ALNS) heuristic is presented to solve the problem. The trade-off between transportation costs and expected loss of attacks is analyzed with a real-world case in South Sudan. The results show that this trade-off is especially relevant in the heterogeneous variant, in which Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) can effectively mitigate risks of truck transport, providing a significant improvement in the objective value compared to a scenario with only trucks. Risks can be completely eliminated by increasing transportation costs by a factor of five.
Robert van Steenbegen is a PhD candidate at IEBIS. He started his PhD project “Last Mile Drone Logistics for Humanitarian Aid” four years ago after finishing is master IEM at the University of Twente. In his research, he investigates the application of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), or drones, to humanitarian logistics. After a severe disaster, affected people require relief goods (e.g., shelter, food, water). UAVs can offer an effective alternative form of transportation for the last-mile delivery of relief goods. In this research, the objective is to analyze in which situations, in what ways and to what degree UAVs can contribute to humanitarian logistics, using simulation modelling, optimization, and reinforcement learning. UAVs are especially effective in situations with high uncertainty in demand, locations, travel times, or security and have the ability to reach any disaster-affected location.