Civil-Military Collaboration in Smart Environments under Adversarial Conditions

Natural disasters occur unpredictably and can range in severity from something locally manageable to large scale events that require external intervention. In particular, when large scale disasters occur, they can cause widespread damage and overwhelm the ability of local governments and authorities to respond. In such situations, Civil-Military Cooperation (CIMIC) is essential for a rapid and robust Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief (HADR) operation. These type of operations bring to bear the Command and Control (C2) and Logistics capabilities of the military to rapidly deploy assets to help with the disaster relief activities. IoT, Smart Cities, and Smart Environments can significantly improve the ability for the military to quickly obtain Situation Awareness (SA) about the disaster and optimize the planning of rescue operations and allocation of resources to achieve the best possible effects. However, there are several interoperability and security challenges related to achieving an effective federated SA under adversarial conditions. In particular, one of the significant threats is the ability for an adversary to exploit the reduced effectiveness of local law enforcement, trust management, and cyber defence capabilities, as well as the overall uncertainty in the situation, to interfere with the HADR operation, for example, by injecting mis-information. The focus of this paper is to further examine this challenge of achieving Civil-Military cooperation for HADR operations while countering potential adversarial activities.