arXiv subjects

Hamid Reza Ghaeini

Publications and source records attributed to Hamid Reza Ghaeini.

4 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Navigating Complexity: A User-Centered Evaluation of Project Management Tools

In the age of digital transformation, companies are increasingly relying on specialized software to manage the complexity of projects. However, when selecting tools, features and costs often take precedence over user experience (UX), leading to low adoption rates, user frustration, and project delays. This study empirically evaluates the user experience of leading project management tools (Jira, Trello, Monday.com, Asana, and Microsoft Project) across various project scales using a mixed methods approach. The System Usability Scale (SUS) was used as the primary quantitative instrument, with data collected from 141 experienced professionals via online questionnaires. The results reveal a significant trade-off between functionality and usability. Trello achieved the highest SUS score (77.5), indicating a superior user experience for small projects and agile teams, while Microsoft Project scored the lowest (51.2), suggesting significant usability challenges despite its robust features. Jira demonstrated a balanced profile, offering powerful features with manageable complexity. Statistical analyses confirmed that the choice of the optimal tool is highly context dependent, with team size and project complexity influencing UX outcomes. The findings underscore that UX is not a secondary feature but a critical success factor for software acceptance and project effectiveness. This study provides an evidence-based framework for aligning tool selection with the project context, offers practitioners actionable insights, and identifies design opportunities for software developers.

cs.SE↗

arXiv2026

An Embedded Industrial Irrigation System with Weather-Integrated Intelligent Scheduling

Efficient irrigation management requires timely responses to soil moisture conditions and anticipated weather changes. This article presents an embedded, weather-based irrigation system that integrates soil moisture monitoring using multiple sensors, edge-based decision-making, automated pump control, and local data management. Four capacitive soil moisture sensors are connected to an STM32F103C8T6 microcontroller for data acquisition, while a BTT Pi V1.2 platform evaluates the sensor data, retrieves short-term weather forecasts, makes irrigation decisions, manages a graphical user interface, and stores operational data locally. Individual sensor readings serve as the basis for zone-level irrigation decisions, while the median of four time-averaged readings supports monitoring and analysis. Forecasted precipitation is taken into account as effective precipitation to reduce the calculated irrigation requirement before the pump is activated. The system was evaluated as part of a one-month cultivation trial with radishes, during which a total of 38,112 data points from measurement cycles were recorded. The median value of normalized soil moisture averaged 47.93\% and remained predominantly within the configured control range. Three irrigation events with a planned total irrigation volume of 26.68 L were recorded. Finally, we demonstrate the technical feasibility of integrating sensors, weather data, local data processing, automated control, and data collection into a scalable platform for precision irrigation.

cs.ET↗

arXiv2026

Resource-constrained Remote Attestation of Smart Meters Using Merkle Trees in a Trusted Execution Environment

Smart meters are pivotal to the functioning of smart grids, as they measure and transmit energy consumption data that includes sensitive information about household energy usage patterns. While this data offers significant financial benefits, it can also reveal detailed insights into residents' daily routines, making the security of smart meters a critical concern. This paper introduces a novel remote attestation method for smart meters that ensures the integrity and privacy of data exchanged between smart meters and central servers while detecting unauthorized tampering. Our approach structures the communication data into a Merkle Tree-a hash data structure that facilitates efficient data integrity and authenticity verification. All operations involved in constructing the Merkle root and hashing critical data are executed in the secure environment of a Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) using OP-TEE, thereby maintaining the integrity and security of the smart meter's data. Comparing our experimental results with the related works highlights the superiority of our method in terms of resource efficiency, security robustness, and the feasibility of implementation on smart meters and resource-constrained devices, thereby enhancing the overall security and reliability of smart grid systems.

cs.CR↗

arXiv2017

Gamifying Education and Research on ICS Security: Design, Implementation and Results of S3

In this work, we consider challenges relating to security for Industrial Control Systems (ICS) in the context of ICS security education and research targeted both to academia and industry. We propose to address those challenges through gamified attack training and countermeasure evaluation. We tested our proposed ICS security gamification idea in the context of the (to the best of our knowledge) first Capture-The-Flag (CTF) event targeted to ICS security called SWaT Security Showdown (S3). Six teams acted as attackers in a security competition leveraging an ICS testbed, with several academic defense systems attempting to detect the ongoing attacks. The event was conducted in two phases. The online phase (a jeopardy-style CTF) served as a training session. The live phase was structured as an attack-defense CTF. We acted as judges and we assigned points to the attacker teams according to a scoring system that we developed internally based on multiple factors, including realistic attacker models. We conclude the paper with an evaluation and discussion of the S3, including statistics derived from the data collected in each phase of S3.

cs.CR↗