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Dynamic scene reconstruction has achieved significant milestones with the advent of 3D Gaussian Splatting (3DGS). However, extending this technology from geometric reconstruction to semantic understanding in dynamic environments remains a challenge. Existing methods often rely on external 2D trackers, which lead to temporal inconsistencies and semantic drift, or suffer from the high computational costs of high-dimensional feature fields. In this paper, we propose a novel framework, Gaussian Semantic Segmentation based on Color and Shape Deformation Fields (GSSBC), to address these issues. Building upon our GBC dynamic scene representation, we bind learnable semantic features to deformable Gaussian primitives. We introduce a spatiotemporal contrastive learning strategy guided by the Segment Anything Model (SAM) to enforce semantic consistency without explicit tracking. Furthermore, we employ a density-based clustering algorithm with label propagation to extract discrete object entities efficiently. Experimental results on the HyperNeRF and Neu3D datasets demonstrate that our method achieves superior segmentation accuracy and spatiotemporal stability compared to state-of-the-art approaches, enabling effective semantic understanding in complex dynamic scenes.

The 3DGS (3D Gaussian Splatting) series of works has achieved significant success in novel view synthesis, but further research is needed for dynamic scene reconstruction tasks. In this paper, we propose a new framework based on 3DGS for handling dynamic scene reconstruction problems involving color changes. Our approach employs a multi-stage training strategy combining motion and color deformation fields to accurately model dynamic geometry and appearance changes. Additionally, we design two modular components: the Dynamic Component for capturing motion variations and the Color Component for managing material and color changes. These components flexibly adapt to different scenes, enhancing our method’s versatility. Experimental results demonstrate that our method achieves real-time rendering at 80 FPS on an RTX 4090 and achieves higher reconstruction accuracy than baseline methods such as HexPlane and Deformable3DGS. Furthermore, it reduces training time by approximately 10%, indicating improved training efficiency. These quantitative results confirm the effectiveness of our approach in delivering high-fidelity 4D reconstruction of complex dynamic environments.

The application of Deep Learning methodologies to Non-Intrusive Load Monitoring (NILM) gave rise to a new family of Neural NILM approaches which increasingly outperform traditional NILM approaches. In this extended abstract describing our ongoing research, we analyze recent Neural NILM approaches and our findings imply that these approaches have difficulties in generating valid, reasonably-shaped appliance load profiles. We propose to enhance Neural NILM approaches with appliance load sequence generators trained with a Generative Adversarial Network to mitigate the described problem. The preliminary results of our experiments with Generative Adversarial Networks show the potential of the approach, albeit there is no strong evidence yet that this approach outperforms the examined end-to-end-trained Neural NILM approaches. In the progress of our investigations, we generalize energy-based NILM performance metrics and establish the complete classification confusion matrix based on the estimated energy in appliance load profiles. This enables the adaption of all known classification scores to their energy-based counterparts.

There has been a large number of contributions on privacy-preserving smart metering with Differential Privacy, addressing questions from actual enforcement at the smart meter to billing at the energy provider. However, exploitation is mostly limited to application of cryptographic security means between smart meters and energy providers. We illustrate along the use case of privacy preserving load forecasting that Differential Privacy is indeed a valuable addition that unlocks novel information flows for optimization. We show that (i) there are large differences in utility along three selected forecasting methods, (ii) energy providers can enjoy good utility especially under the linear regression benchmark model, and (iii) households can participate in privacy preserving load forecasting with an individual membership inference risk <60 % , only 10% over random guessing.

The flexibility of distributed energy resources (DERs) can be modeled in various ways. Each model that can be used for creating feasible load profiles of a DER represents a potential model for the flexibility of that particular DER. Based on previous work, this paper presents generalized patterns for exploiting such models. Subsequently, the idea of using artificial neural networks in such patterns is evaluated. We studied different types and topologies of ANNs for the presented realization patterns and multiple device configurations, achieving a remarkably precise representation of the given devices in most of the cases. Overall, there was no single best ANN topology. Instead, a suitable individual topology had to be found for every pattern and device configuration. In addition to the best performing ANNs for each pattern and configuration that is presented in this paper all data from our experiments is published online. The paper is concluded with an evaluation of a classification based pattern using data of a real combined heat and power plant in a smart building.

Cyber-physical systems (CPSs) constitute the backbone of critical infrastructures such as power grids or water distribution networks. Operating failures in these systems can cause serious risks for society. To avoid or minimize downtime, operators require real-time awareness about critical incidents. However, online event identification in CPSs is challenged by the complex interdependency of numerous physical and digital components, requiring to take cyber attacks and physical failures equally into account. The online event identification problem is further complicated through the lack of historical observations of critical but rare events, and the continuous evolution of cyber attack strategies. This work introduces and demonstrates CyPhERS, a Cyber-Physical Event Reasoning System. CyPhERS provides real-time information pertaining the occurrence, location, physical impact, and root cause of potentially critical events in CPSs, without the need for historical event observations. Key novelty of CyPhERS is the capability to generate informative and interpretable event signatures of known and unknown types of both cyber attacks and physical failures. The concept is evaluated and benchmarked on a demonstration case that comprises a multitude of attack and fault events targeting various components of a CPS. The results demonstrate that the event signatures provide relevant and inferable information on both known and unknown event types.

Due to its crucial role in identity and access management in modern enterprise networks, Active Directory (AD) is a top target of Advanced Persistence Threat (APT) actors. Conventional intrusion detection systems (IDS) excel at identifying malicious behaviors caused by malware, but often fail to detect stealthy attacks launched by APT actors. Recent advance in provenance-based IDS (PIDS) shows promises by exposing malicious system activities in causal attack graphs. However, existing approaches are restricted to intra-machine tracing, and unable to reveal the scope of attackers' traversal inside a network. We propose HADES, the first PIDS capable of performing accurate causality-based cross-machine tracing by leveraging a novel concept called logon session based execution partitioning to overcome several challenges in cross-machine tracing. We design HADES as an efficient on-demand tracing system, which performs whole-network tracing only when it first identifies an authentication anomaly signifying an ongoing AD attack, for which we introduce a novel lightweight authentication anomaly detection model rooted in our extensive analysis of AD attacks. To triage attack alerts, we present a new algorithm integrating two key insights we identified in AD attacks. Our evaluations show that HADES outperforms both popular open source detection systems and a prominent commercial AD attack detector.

In Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) attacks, achieving stealthy persistence within target systems is often crucial for an attacker's success. This persistence allows adversaries to maintain prolonged access, often evading detection mechanisms. Recognizing its pivotal role in the APT lifecycle, this paper introduces Cyber Persistence Detector (CPD), a novel system dedicated to detecting cyber persistence through provenance analytics. CPD is founded on the insight that persistent operations typically manifest in two phases: the \"persistence setup\" and the subsequent \"persistence execution\". By causally relating these phases, we enhance our ability to detect persistent threats. First, CPD discerns setups signaling an impending persistent threat and then traces processes linked to remote connections to identify persistence execution activities. A key feature of our system is the introduction of pseudo-dependency edges (pseudo-edges), which effectively connect these disjoint phases using data provenance analysis, and expert-guided edges, which enable faster tracing and reduced log size. These edges empower us to detect persistence threats accurately and efficiently. Moreover, we propose a novel alert triage algorithm that further reduces false positives associated with persistence threats. Evaluations conducted on well-known datasets demonstrate that our system reduces the average false positive rate by 93% compared to state-of-the-art methods.

There has been a large number of contributions on privacy-preserving smart metering with Differential Privacy, addressing questions from actual enforcement at the smart meter to billing at the energy provider. However, exploitation is mostly limited to application of cryptographic security means between smart meters and energy providers. We illustrate along the use case of privacy preserving load forecasting that Differential Privacy is indeed a valuable addition that unlocks novel information flows for optimization. We show that (i) there are large differences in utility along three selected forecasting methods, (ii) energy providers can enjoy good utility especially under the linear regression benchmark model, and (iii) households can participate in privacy preserving load forecasting with an individual re-identification risk < 60%, only 10% over random guessing.

This study aims to explore the efficacy of a hybrid deep learning and radiomics approach, supplemented with patient metadata, in the noninvasive dermoscopic imaging-based diagnosis of skin lesions. We analyzed dermoscopic images from the International Skin Imaging Collaboration (ISIC) dataset, spanning 2016–2020, encompassing a variety of skin lesions. Our approach integrates deep learning with a comprehensive radiomics analysis, utilizing a vast array of quantitative image features to precisely quantify skin lesion patterns. The dataset includes cases of three, four, and eight different skin lesion types. Our methodology was benchmarked against seven classification methods from the ISIC 2020 challenge and prior research using a binary decision framework. The proposed hybrid model demonstrated superior performance in distinguishing benign from malignant lesions, achieving area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUROC) scores of 99%, 95%, and 96%, and multiclass decoding AUROCs of 98.5%, 94.9%, and 96.4%, with sensitivities of 97.6%, 93.9%, and 96.0% and specificities of 98.4%, 96.7%, and 96.9% in the internal ISIC 2018 challenge, as well as in the external Jinan and Longhua datasets, respectively. Our findings suggest that the integration of radiomics and deep learning, utilizing dermoscopic images, effectively captures the heterogeneity and pattern expression of skin lesions.