With an overall accuracy of 99.43% and a detection rate of 99.92%, the solution is in sync with Dubai’s safety concerns for self-driving cars

Dubai, United Arab Emirates - May 26, 2019:   A research paper on security challenges of smart city transportation developed by Canadian University Dubai (CUD) Assistant Professor, Dr. Moayad Aloqaily, has been published in the leading international journal ‘Ad Hoc Networks’.

Dr. Aloqaily’s insights come in the context of a recent directive issued by His Highness Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Crown Prince of Dubai and Chairman of Dubai Executive Council, to ensure safety standards in the testing of self-driving cars, which are a centrepiece of the Dubai Autonomous Transportation Strategy and a fundamental development towards smart city living.

With the wave of innovation surrounding Connected and Autonomous Electric Vehicles (CAEVs) in the automobile industry, the paper, entitled ‘An intrusion detection system for connected vehicles in smart cities’, responds to some of the safety concerns surrounding the evolution of intelligent transportation systems. 

Among Dubai’s six strategic objectives in embracing smart city infrastructure is the development of smooth transport, driven by autonomous and shared mobility solutions. The Smart Dubai 2021 strategy recognizes the need to embed security in this process; to anticipate risks and to protect people and information.  

Dr. Aloqaily’s research introduces a continuous, automated cloud service availability framework that can identify security attacks on smart vehicles and promote the effective and efficient protection of this advancing technology. The publication of the paper in a world-renowned journal in the computer networks and communications domain highlights the significance of this research in a global, as well as local context.

Dr. Aloqaily, who teaches in the CUD Faculty of Engineering, Applied Science and Technology, explained, “In the very near future, transportation will go through a transitional period that will shape the industry beyond recognition, and smart vehicles play a significant role in this advancement. The availability of continuous vehicular cloud services is becoming crucial and as smart cities continue to deploy high-performance technologies, security issues with regards to communication and information sharing still prevail.

“Our research aims to mitigate this concern, enabling an intrusion detection mechanism against security attacks that meets users’ quality of service and quality of experience requirements. The proposed solution has achieved an overall accuracy of 99.43% with a detection rate of 99.92%.”

The innovation, which maintains continuous service through clustering smart-vehicles, and uses trusted third parties to mediate the communication process, has the potential to contribute to support the safe implementation of autonomous transportation. Dubai’s Roads and Transport Authority aims to transform 25% of the total transportation in the city to autonomous mode by 2030.