COVID-19 is a pandemic that has affected over 170 countries around the world. The number of infected and deceased patients has been increasing at an alarming rate in almost all the affected nations. Forecasting techniques can be inculcated thereby assisting in designing better strategies and in taking productive decisions. These techniques assess the situations of the past thereby enabling better predictions about the situation to occur in the future. These predictions might help to prepare against possible threats and consequences. Forecasting techniques play a very important role in yielding accurate predictions. This study categorizes forecasting techniques into two types, namely, stochastic theory mathematical models and data science/machine learning techniques. Data collected from various platforms also play a vital role in forecasting. In this study, two categories of datasets have been discussed, i.e., big data accessed from World Health Organization/National databases and data from a social media communication. Forecasting of a pandemic can be done based on various parameters such as the impact of environmental factors, incubation period, the impact of quarantine, age, gender and many more. These techniques and parameters used for forecasting are extensively studied in this work. However, forecasting techniques come with their own set of challenges (technical and generic). This study discusses these challenges and also provides a set of recommendations for the people who are currently fighting the global COVID-19 pandemic.

Data growth in today’s world is exponential, many applications generate huge amount of data streams at very high speed such as smart grids, sensor networks, video surveillance, financial systems, medical science data, web click streams, network data, etc. In the case of traditional data mining, the data set is generally static in nature and available many times for processing and analysis. However, data stream mining has to satisfy constraints related to real-time response, bounded and limited memory, single-pass, and concept-drift detection. The main problem is identifying the hidden pattern and knowledge for understanding the context for identifying trends from continuous data streams. In this paper, various data stream methods and algorithms are reviewed and evaluated on standard synthetic data streams and real-life data streams. Density-micro clustering and density-grid-based clustering algorithms are discussed and comparative analysis in terms of various internal and external clustering evaluation methods is performed. It was observed that a single algorithm cannot satisfy all the performance measures. The performance of these data stream clustering algorithms is domain-specific and requires many parameters for density and noise thresholds.

Advancements in Cyber-Physical Systems (CPSs) makes CPSs essential entities in society today, and have made them prominent across all fields. For example, the healthcare industry has evolved technologically and has effectively incorporated CPS into many application areas. While these advancements, involving Medical Cyber-Physical Systems (MCPS), have been revised according to Society 4.0, there are still issues that need to be considered while we transition from an information-based society (Society 4.0) to a human-centric society (Society 5.0). In this paper, we propose an MCPS framework for Society 5.0 in the context of some state-of-the-art technologies. The proposed system focuses on enhancing security aspects of Society 5.0 through introduction of a Security Layer equipped with protocols such as Open Authorization (OAuth), User-Managed Access (UMA), and Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI). The added security layer is designed to incorporate country-specific security laws. Challenges and design issues in developing a trusted and secure service for MCPS are also discussed using vulnerability assessment and attack modeling. Finally, we discuss ethical aspects that need to be addressed in the transition from Society 4.0 to Society 5.0.

The current era witnesses the notable transition of society from an information-centric to a human-centric one aiming at striking a balance between economic advancements and upholding the societal and fundamental needs of humanity. It is undeniable that the Internet of Things (IoT) and artificial intelligence (AI) are the key players in realizing a human-centric society. However, for society and individuals to benefit from advanced technology, it is important to gain the trust of human users by guaranteeing the inclusion of ethical aspects such as safety, privacy, nondiscrimination, and legality of the system. Incorporating explainable AI (XAI) into the system to establish explainability and transparency supports the development of trust among stakeholders, including the developers of the system. This article presents the general class of vulnerabilities that affect IoT systems and directs the readers’ attention toward intrusion detection systems (IDSs). The existing state-of-the-art IDS system is discussed. An attack model modeling the possible attacks is presented. Furthermore, since our focus is on providing explanations for the IDS predictions, we first present a consolidated study of the commonly used explanation methods along with their advantages and disadvantages. We then present a high-level human-inclusive XAI framework for the IoT that presents the participating components and roles. We also hint upon a few approaches to upholding safety and privacy using XAI that we will be taking up in our future work. An attack model based on the study of possible attacks on the system is also presented in the article. The article also presents guidelines to choose a suitable XAI method and a taxonomy of explanation evaluation mechanisms, which is an important yet less visited aspect of explainable AI.