Kashif Zia

• PhD
• Professor (Associate) at Sohar University

The latest manifestation of “all connected world" is the Internet of Things (IoT), and Internet of Vehicles (IoV) is one of the key examples of IoT these days. In Social IoV (SIoV), each vehicle is treated as a social object where it establishes and manages its own Social Network (SN). Incidentally, most of the SIoV research in the literature is re...

Evacuation modeling and simulation are usually used to explore different possibilities for evacuation, however, it is a real challenge to integrate different categories of characteristics in unified modeling space. In this paper, we propose an agent-based model of an evacuating crowd so that a comparative analysis of a different sets of parameters...

The complexity science, with the help of, agent based modeling has recently claimed that the free market economy is producing wealth inequality—a totally opposite perception, which is in practice for more than 10 decades. It is capable of investigating the distribution of money in the market economy and finding solution for unfair gap between the w...

Virtual worlds are the most advanced form of virtual environments, which offer one of the best platforms for serving various domains. They are, especially, well suited for education, to cope with the physical restrictions imposed due to COVID-19 outbreak, as they offer classroom experience to their users through immersion. They are online interacti...

Virtual worlds are both computation and communication intensive as they provide rich content and frequent updates to players for an improved performance. Virtual worlds use spatial partitioning to scale and dynamic scalability frameworks are the preferred choice for an improved resource utilisation. However, they are very costly in terms of time, a...

A biometric authentication system is more convenient and secure than graphical or textual passwords when accessing information systems. Unfortunately, biometric authentication systems have the disadvantage of being susceptible to spoofing attacks. Authentication schemes based on biometrics, including face recognition, are susceptible to spoofing. T...

Background: The recently emerged novel coronavirus, "severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2)", caused a highly contagious disease called coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). It has severely damaged the world's most developed countries and has turned into a major threat for low- and middle-income countries. Since its emergence...

A digital image is scrambled by rearranging the pixels of an image, so that the original information contents are indistinguishable visually and relationships between initially adjacent pixels are disturbed. Cellular Automata (CA) are dynamic and discrete systems capable of generating complex behaviors based on simple rules. This characteristic mak...

Systems using biometric authentication offer greater security than traditional textual and graphical password-based systems for granting access to information systems. Although biometric-based authentication has its benefits, it can be vulnerable to spoofing attacks. Those vulnerabilities are inherent to any biometric-based subsystem, including fac...

Scheduling plays a vital role in the efficient utilization of the available resources in clouds. This paper investigates the capabilities of the current scheduling algorithms of WorkFlowSim framework for processing scientific workflows. These investigations used four different sizes of workloads each, for, five well-known workflows. It was revealed...

Healthcare Solutions Using Machine Learning and Informatics cover novel and innovative solutions for healthcare that applies machine learning and biomedical informatics technology. The healthcare sector is one of the most critical in society. This book presents a series of artificial intelligence, machine learning, intelligent IoT-based solutions f...

In this paper, an Agent-Based Model (ABM) is proposed to evaluate the impact of COVID-19 vaccination drive in different settings. The main focus is to evaluate the counter-effectiveness of disparity in vaccination drive among different regions/countries. The proposed model is simple yet novel in the sense that it captures the spatial transmission-i...

SARS-CoV-2 has been associated with an increased rate of venous thromboembolism in critically ill patients.Since surgical patients are already at higher risk of venous thromboembolism than general populations, thisstudy aimed to determine if patients with peri-operative or prior SARS-CoV-2 were at further increased risk ofvenous thromboembolism. We...

This paper investigates the impact of sequential content load algorithm on regional transfer in OpenSimulator framework. It, then, presents an abstract parallel content load algorithm, which is implemented using the basic parallel for and chunk partitioning constructs to exploit the parallelism of multi-core architectures. This work used a set of f...

In this paper, an Agent-Based Model (ABM) is proposed to evaluate the impact of COVID-19 vaccination drive in different settings. The main focus is to evaluate the counter-effectiveness of disparity in vaccination drive among different regions/countries. The model proposed is simple yet novel in the sense that it captures the spatial transmission-i...

One of the goals of the future manufacturing systems is autonomic and self-organized shop floors. This requires flexible manufacturing units in terms of their availability and ability so that extremely personalized products, even of lot size equal to one, can be produced. In this paper, we propose a framework, which focuses on grouping cohesion of...

Honor culture" is a societal norm that persuades people to fight for their honor. Contributing factors to the persistence of honor culture include institutional weakness, and environmental challenges in terms of resources. In this paper, an agent-based model of honor culture is reexamined and extended. The main purpose of the extension is to study...

This is the era of modern and highly sophisticated research which is on-going at various geographical locations and there are so many consequences that are also associated with the security and ethical responsibility. Hence knowingly or unknowingly the human civilization would face the kind of traumas and pandemics which has already been happened i...

One of the goals of the future manufacturing systems is autonomic and self-organized shop floors. This requires flexible manufacturing units in terms of their availability and ability so that extremely personalized products, even of lot size equal to one, can be produced. In this paper, we propose a framework, which focuses on grouping cohesion of...

The paper utilizes agent-based simulations to study diffusion and absorption of knowledge. The causal relation of diffusion on absorp- AQ1 tion is established in order. The process of diffusion and absorption of knowledge is governed by network structure and the dynamics of the recurring influence, conceptualized and modeled as legitimacy, credibility,...

The hippocampus plays a key role in memory formation and learning. According to the concept of active systems memory consolidation, transiently stored memory traces are transferred from the hippocampus into the neocortex for permanent storage. This phenomenon relies on hippocampal network oscillations, particularly sharp wave ripples [SPW-Rs). In t...

A model of bystanders' effect on volunteering (in case of an observed crime or critical situation) is extended to incorporate the possibility of a sense of guilt (after nonintervention). Based on sound theoretical and experimental foundations, an existing model of the spread of unpopular norms is used to allow dispersion of an unpopular norm (a mil...

Diabetes is one of the most widespread diseases resulting in an increase in mortality rate, and negatively affecting Oman's economy. In 2019, an estimated 1.5 million deaths were directly caused by diabetes world health organization (WHO). The total number of diabetes cases among Omanis aged between 20 and 79 in 2015 is about 128,769, which increas...

The things in the Internet of Things are becoming more and more socially aware. What social means for these things (more often termed as “social objects”) is predominately determined by how and when objects interact with each other. In this paper, an agent-based model for Social Internet of Things is proposed, which features the realization of vari...

Peri-operative SARS-CoV-2 infection increases postoperative mortality. The aim of this study was to determine the optimal duration of planned delay before surgery in patients who have had SARS-CoV-2 infection. This international, multicentre, prospective cohort study included patients undergoing elective or emergency surgery during October 2020. Su...

Motivated by the rapid spread of COVID-19 all across the globe, we haveperformed simulations of a system dynamic epidemic spread model in differentpossible situations. The simulation, not only captures the model dynamic of thespread of the virus, but also, takes care of population and mobility data. Themodel is calibrated based on epidemic data and...

Development of crowd evacuation systems is a challenge due to involvement of complex interrelated aspects, diversity of involved individuals and/or environment, and lack of direct evidence. Evacuation modeling and simulation is used to analyze various possible outcomes as different scenarios unfold, typically when the complexity of scenario is high...

Motivated by the rapid spread of COVID-19 all across the globe, we have performed simulations of a system dynamic epidemic spread model in different possible situations. The simulation, not only captures the model dynamic of the spread of the virus, but also, takes care of population and mobility data. The model is calibrated based on epidemic data...

Motivated by the rapid spread of COVID-19 all across the globe, we have performed simulations of a system dynamic epidemic spread model in different possible situations. The simulation, not only captures the model dynamic of the spread of the virus, but also, takes care of population and mobility data. The model is calibrated based on epidemic data...

In addition to seamless connectivity and smartness, the objects in the Internet of Things (IoT) are expected to have the social capabilities -- these objects are termed as ``social objects''. In this paper, an intuitive paradigm of social interactions between these objects are argued and modeled. The impact of social behavior on the interaction pat...

“The wisdom of crowds” is often observed in social discourses and activities around us. The manifestations of it are, however, so intrinsically embedded and behaviorally accepted that an elaboration of a social phenomenon evidencing such wisdom is often considered a discovery; or at least an astonishing fact. One such scenario is explored here, nam...

People lives in a society adhering to different types of norms, and some of these norms are unpopular. This paper proposes an agent-based model for unpopular norm aversion. The proposed model is simulated asking important "what-if" questions to elaborate on the conditions and reasons behind the emergence, spreading and aversion of unpopular norms....

Manufacturing systems of the future need to have flexible resources and flexible routing to produce extremely personalized products, even of lot size equal to one. In this paper we have proposed a framework, which is designed to achieve this goal. Towards this we have integrated an established cultural evolution model to achieve desirable flexibili...

Best Paper Award

Social aspects of connectivity and information dispersion are often ignored while weighing the potential of Internet of Things (IoT). In the specialized domain of Internet of Vehicles (IoV), Social IoV (SIoV) is introduced realization its importance. Assuming a more commonly acceptable standardization of Big Data generated by IoV, the social dimens...

The latest manifestation of all connected world is the Internet of Things (IoT), and Internet of Vehicles (IoV) is evolved as one of the first prominent examples of IoT. Social IoV (SIoV) is a term used to represent when vehicles build and manage their own social network. While exploring these futuristic systems, in addition to physical aspects, the...

In recent years, a lot of research is focusing on predicting real-world outcomes using Social networks data (for example, Twitter Data). Sentiment Analysis of the twitter data thus has become one of the key aspects of making predictions involving human sentiments. Stock market movements are very sensitive and it affects investment of the investors...

Social aspects of connectivity and information dispersion are often ignored while weighing the potential of Internet of Things (IoT). In the specialized domain of Internet of Vehicles (IoV), Social IoV (SIoV) is introduced realization its importance. Assuming a more commonly acceptable standardization of Big Data generated by IoV, the social dimens...

This paper presents an agent-based model of population desegregation and provides a thorough analysis of the social behavior leading to it, namely, the contact hypothesis. Based on the parameters of frequency and intensity of influence of group leaders on the population, the proposed model is constituted by two layers: 1) a physical layer of the po...

Manufacturing systems of the future need to have flexible resources and flexible routing to produce extremely personalized products, even of lot size equal to one. In this paper, we have proposed a framework, which is designed to achieve this goal. Towards this, we have integrated an established cultural evolution model to achieve desired flexibili...

Manufacturing systems of the future need to have flexible resources and flexible routing to produce extremely personalized products, even of lot size equal to one. In this paper, we have proposed a framework, which is designed to achieve this goal. Towards this, we have integrated an established cultural evolution model to achieve desired flexibili...

Future commercial products and product assemblies could greatly benefit from recent developments in machine learning , providing the foundation of cognitive products equipped with sensors and actuators and embedded into tangible objects operating in the real world. This paper identifies key challenges in the related fields and provides motivation f...

Internet of Vehicles (IoV) is turning out to be one of the first impressive examples of Internet of Things (IoT). In IoV, the factors of connectivity and interaction/information dispersion are equally important as sensing/actuating, context-awareness, services provisioning, etc. However, most of the researches related to connectivity and interactio...

In addition to seamless connectivity and smartness, the objects in Internet of Things are expected to have social capabilities. In the literature, these objects are named “social objects.” In this chapter, an intuitive paradigm of social interactions between these objects is argued and modeled. The impact of social behavior on the interaction patte...

Heterogeneous databases now facing an emerging challenge of moving towards big data. These databases are adhoc polyglot systems, complex, and NoSQL tools which are semantically annotated. Integration of these heterogeneous databases becoming very challenging because of big data analytics is integrating human and machines contexts. In this paper, an...

People lives in the society abide by different norms and sometime these norms are unpopular. Usually, these norms develop within small local community, but later spread out to entire population. It is evidenced that the people not only abide by these norms but also start enforcing in certain situations. It is imperative to know why people enforce a...

A majority of research work carried out in crowd evacuation rely on simulation due to non-availability of real and realistic trial data. In this paper, an agent-based simulation study of an evacuating crowd is presented. The model is based on the microscopic behavioural rules formulated through small-scale empirical evidence in conjunction with cro...

Smart cities are much needed in today’s world and it is based on software systems and software architecture. Software architecture is the backbone of smart cities. All the services and systems running in smart cities are basically running on core software architecture and components. Information and communication technologies’ tools and techniques...

Massive Open Online Course (MOOC)s are facing several challenges, and researchers in this domain are exploring several dimensions to these problems. In this paper, we address the high dropout issue faced by MOOC systems, which is a serious challenge capable of undermining the effectiveness of these systems. There is a significant body of research a...

Purpose Participatory wireless sensor networks (PWSN) is an emerging paradigm that leverages existing sensing and communication infrastructures for the sensing task. Various environmental phenomenon – P monitoring applications dealing with noise pollution, road traffic, requiring spatio-temporal data samples of P (to capture its variations and its...

"The wisdom of crowd'' is so often observed in social discourses and activities around us. The manifestations of it are, however, so intrinsically embedded and behaviorally accepted that an elaboration of a social phenomenon evidencing such wisdom is often cheered as a discovery; or at least an astonishing fact. One such scenario is explored here,...

In this paper, an agent-based model of information/innovation dissimulation and adoption, motivated by seminal model from Centola and Macy is presented. The four factors contributing to complex contagion, namely, strategic complementarity, credibility, legitimacy, and emotional contagion are considered. A parameterized mechanism of relating credibi...

Robotic exploration typically involves navigation through unknown terrains. In this paper, collaborative strategy for coverage is presented, in which the concept of informed agents as a leader in a swarm has been introduced for autonomous coverage. The small population of robots in large swarms act as informed leaders, and help others to accomplish...

Scalability is one of the major issues to cope with, in digital spaces, called virtual worlds, usually parallel and distributed in nature. In our previous work, we developed a framework for scaling these environments to cope with issues in static and dynamic methods already in use for scalability. It was implemented using the OpenSimulator framewor...

Social aspects of connectivity and information dispersion are often ignored while weighing the potential of Internet of Things (IoT). Assuming a more commonly acceptable standardization of Big Data generated by Internet of Vehicles (IoV), the social dimensions enabling its fruitful usage; emerging as Social IoV (SIoV); remains a challenge. In this...

Social aspects of connectivity and information dispersion are often ignored while weighing the potential of Internet of Things (IoT). Assuming a more commonly acceptable standardization of Big Data generated by Internet of Vehicles (IoV), the social dimensions enabling its fruitful usage; emerging as Social IoV (SIoV); remains a challenge. In this...

In this paper, a demonstration of simulation modeling for a SIoV Recommendations System. An agent-based model of information sharing (for context-based recommendations) of a hypothetical population of smart vehicles is presented. Some important hypotheses are tested under reasonable connectivity and data constraints. We demonstrate how we model our...

This paper demonstrates how to model a simulation of Social Internet of Things (SIoV) based recommendation system. An agent-based model of information sharing (for context-based recommendations) of a hypothetical population of smart vehicles is presented. Some important hypotheses are tested under reasonable connectivity and data constraints. We de...

CALL FOR PAPERS The principles of human-computer interaction have changed. After decades of thinking about how humans actively approach ICT systems, the focus is on thinking how ICT systems should approach humans. In fact, we need to go back in time when machines used to make humans attentive, like a light indicator signaling the status of a machi...

This paper presents an agent-based model of food safety management. The model proposed by [1] involving consumers , regulators and stores is extended to evaluate the phenomena of "the wisdom of crowds" towards the conditions leading to more dependable system. Through simulation, it is revealed that more vigilance in correction measures ensures a la...

A majority of research work carried out in crowd evacuation rely on simulation due to non-availability of real and realistic trial data. In this paper, an agent-based simulation study of an evacuating crowd is presented. The model is based on the microscopic behavioural rules formulated through small-scale empirical evidence in conjunction with cro...

This paper presents an agent-based model of population desegregation and provides a thorough analysis of the social behavior leading to it, namely, the contact hypothesis. Based on the parameters of frequency and intensity of influence of group leaders on the population, the proposed model is constituted by two layers: 1) a physical layer of the po...

The expansion and contraction are the fundamental operations in systems assigning resources strictly based on load. Previously, an aggregation algorithm was proposed for distributing the load of a space (square in shape initially) comprises of a number of sub-spaces as balanced as possible among two servers. It used the SplitCapacity constraint to...

People lives in the society adhering to different norms. Some of these norms are unpopular. Sometimes, for the overall societal good, it is necessary to oppose and possibly avert unpopular norms. To achieve this goal, it is necessary to know the conditions, which enable persistence of the unpopular norms and models that support possible aversion of...

In addition to seamless connectedness and smartness, the objects in Internet of Things (IoT) are expected to have social capabilities. In literature, these objects are named as "social objects". In this paper, an intuitive paradigm of social interactions between these objects is argued and model. The purpose of the model is to analyze the impact of...

Abstract: Research in Internet of Things (IoT's) have surpassed the notions of connectivity and smartness, and entered into an era of sociable objects. A model based on socially-influenced interactions for “social objects” is presented to demonstrate its application and strength. Adopting an agent-based modeling method and simulation, a comparative...

In this paper efforts are made to review the state of art of service oriented technologies in smart home design. Services oriented software architecture for data exchanges and unit’s integration with reusability is studied in this paper. The standards used in unit design for a smart home like “The Open Gateway Services Initiative” (OSGi) and “Unive...

Purpose It is witnessed that many incidents of crowd evacuation have resulted in catastrophic results, claiming lives of hundreds of people. Most of these incidents were result of localized herding that eventually turned into global panic. Many crowd evacuation models have been proposed with different aspects of interests. This paper is an attempt...

Value Sensitive Design is driven by the motivation of making social and moral values central to the development of ICT systems. Among the most challenging concerns when imparting shared values like accountability, transparency, liberty, fairness and trust into information technology are reliable and comprehensive formal and computational models of...

The use of mobile sensed location data for realistic human track generation is privacy sensitive. People are unlikely to share their private mobile phone data if their tracks were to be simulated. However, the ability to realistically generate human mobility in computer simulations is critical for advances in many domains, including urban planning,...

In this article, we model a behavior-based strategy of autonomous coverage and exploration at the scale of a city with multiple robots. The behavioral components are motivated by Cepeda et al. (Sensors 12 (9): 12772–12797, 2012) and extended to incorporate into a generic cellular-automata based agent model. These agents are representing homogenous...

The use of mobile sensed location data for realistic human track generation is privacy sensitive. People are unlikely to share their private mobile phone data if their tracks were to be simulated. However, the ability to realistically generate human mobility in computer simulations is critical for advances in many domains, including urban planning,...

Many crowd evacuation models have been developed in isolation with respect to the aspects of interest. In this paper, we propose an agent-based model of crowd evacuation, pertaining to symmetric utilization of resources in terms of exit usage and evacuation time. The model is based on a game-theoretic decision support, resolving the consequences of...

In this paper, an agent-based model of bystanders effect on volunteering in a crime situation is presented. The model is pivoted on the results of a game-theoretic experimentation of the volunteering dilemma [18], emphasizing the role of guilt in increasing the volunteering tendency. An analytical model of bystanders effect on volunteering [8] is e...