Author: Ashfaq Hussain Ahmed
Supervisors: Mubashar Iqbal, Sabah Suhail
Abstract: Digital Twins (DTs) are digital representations of their physical counterparts, used for testing, simulation, and prototyping before a physical component is manufactured. DT technology has been widely used in smart manufacturing for several years to improve every area of operations. Moreover, blockchain technology and DTs for industrial systems have gained traction among researchers in the last decade. On the other hand, with recent advancements in smart cities and Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS), the Internet of Vehicles (IoV) concept is becoming more prevalent. DT, which serves as a metric for creating virtual representations of real-world objects, offers enormous potential for enhancing the security and resilience of all parts of smart cities, including IoV, before being deployed in the real world. Very little research exists in the context of blockchain-based DTs as a security enhancer in IoV. In this thesis, we present a comprehensive systematic review of the existing literature where blockchain-based DTs have been suggested as extra security layers for industrial systems. Moreover, a novel blockchain-based security framework is proposed to handle security threats in IoV. Additionally, security threat modeling and risk management for IoV and how the proposed blockchain-based framework mitigates the risks showcased. The proposed solution is evaluated using DT-based simulation for V2S communication as a use case with the help of the Microsoft Azure Digital Twin platform.