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    <title>Research in Progress (RIP)</title>
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    <copyright>Copyright © 2026. National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.</copyright>
    <docs>http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss</docs>
    <managingEditor>tris-trb@nas.edu (Bill McLeod)</managingEditor>
    <webMaster>tris-trb@nas.edu (Bill McLeod)</webMaster>
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      <title>Research in Progress (RIP)</title>
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      <link>https://rip.trb.org/</link>
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    <item>
      <title>Artificial Intelligence (AI)-Enabled Post-Quantum Cryptography for Real-World Deployment of Secure and Resilient Communication for Intelligent Transportation Systems</title>
      <link>https://rip.trb.org/View/2696971</link>
      <description><![CDATA[Cellular Vehicle-to-Everything (C-V2X) communication, standardized in 3GPP Release 14/15 PC5 sidelink mode, is the US DOT-approved technology for direct V2V (vehicle-to vehicle)/ V2I (vehicle-to-infrastructure) communications in the 5.9 GHz band. Current standards and specifications (e.g., SAE J3161 and USDOT/ITE RSU requirements) mandate PC5 Mode 4 operation to enable interoperable safety messaging using conventional cryptographic methods, such as Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC). However, existing cryptographic methods are vulnerable to quantum-computing-based attacks. Thus, integrating Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) into C-V2X communication is imperative to ensure future resilience. However, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)-standardized PQC algorithms introduce large key sizes and computational complexity, resulting in significant latency and bandwidth overhead. These effects risk violating the 100-ms end-to-end delay requirement for 10 Hz Basic Safety Messages (BSMs) and can congest the 5.9-GHz safety channel. Moreover, the direct integration of PQC into current communication standards, such as IEEE 1609.2 and ETSI, poses challenges because these frameworks were originally designed for lightweight ECC-based operations. 
Similarly, post-quantum Homomorphic Encryption (HE) offers robust privacy protection by allowing computation directly on encrypted data without decryption; however, its high computational cost and ciphertext expansion currently limit its use in latency-critical V2X and infrastructure-to-infrastructure (I2I) scenarios. Therefore, deploying PQC and HE within operational testbeds demands optimized scheduling, resource allocation, and adaptive algorithm management to balance cryptographic strength with real-time constraints. To address these challenges, this project aims to develop and evaluate artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled PQC through real-world prototype implementation and testbed integration, thereby enabling the real-world deployment of secure and resilient communication in intelligent transportation systems. Specifically, the objectives of this project are: (i) implementation and real-world evaluation of an AI-enabled PQC integration and dynamic switching framework for C-V2X communication; (ii) real-world evaluation of a privacy-preserving roadside unit (RSU)-Cloud (I2C) communication pipeline using post-quantum homomorphic encryption; and (iii) development of a federated learning framework for collaborative PQC selection policies. To address the USDOT and TraCR 2025–2026 priorities, this project emphasizes field-tested prototypes and operational validation, rather than simulation-only evaluation, to ensure deployment relevance. This project will directly contribute to the deployment of PQC-enabled V2X communication for a secure and reliable connected transportation system.
]]></description>
      <pubDate>Wed, 29 Apr 2026 16:39:01 GMT</pubDate>
      <guid>https://rip.trb.org/View/2696971</guid>
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    <item>
      <title>Cyberattack Resilience in Cooperative Driving Automation Using Experimental Data and Federated Agents: Phase II</title>
      <link>https://rip.trb.org/View/2696905</link>
      <description><![CDATA[Cooperative driving automation or Connected and Automated Vehicles (CAVs) are rapidly taking over modern intelligent transportation systems. The proliferation of CAVs has also intensified concerns around cybersecurity and data privacy. The added communication involved in these driving maneuvers serves as a vulnerable attack surface. The data communicated in Basic Safety Messages (BSMs) of CAVs is highly safety-critical, thus requires secure processing and sharing. Traditional security strategies are mostly machine learning-based that rely on centralized data processing and storage. The centralized servers act as single-point-of-trust, which is vulnerable to failure, compromising data privacy, and adding overhead to communication. To address these challenges, Federated Learning (FL) has emerged as a distributed learning paradigm that enables CAV agents to locally train models and only share model parameters with a global server for updates. This eliminates the need for raw data sharing, which preserves the privacy of sensitive data transfer during CAV communication and reduces the risk of single-point failure.
Despite the benefits of FL, it is still susceptible to threats like poisoning attacks, inference-based adversaries and model manipulation. The model parameters are not secured while shared iteratively between local and global agents. It is possible for adversaries to deliberately inject anomalies into the local model updates, thereby degrading the accuracy of the global model or compromise the individual local agents. To mitigate this inherent problem of FL, Blockchain serves as the apt solution. Blockchain technology is lightweight, fully decentralized data storage framework that replaces conventional centralized databases by providing immutability and tamper-proofing to the stored data. The Secure Hashing Algorithm (SHA) and smart contracts employed by Blockchains facilitate trust and accountability in this storage solution. This research will integrate blockchain with FL to secure the training data shared between FL’s distributed agents. Due to the distributed nature of both frameworks, they complement each other well and are completely compatible for integration. 
]]></description>
      <pubDate>Tue, 28 Apr 2026 16:15:44 GMT</pubDate>
      <guid>https://rip.trb.org/View/2696905</guid>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>Blockchain Application on Smart Transportation Systems</title>
      <link>https://rip.trb.org/View/2553154</link>
      <description><![CDATA[Blockchain technology, predominantly utilized within cryptocurrency, is being increasingly adapted across diverse sectors, and transportation systems is not an exception. Despite presenting several challenges, blockchain technology also offers various advantages. Understanding Blockchain’s potential applications and benefits in addressing future urban challenges is an emerging field of research which has not been fully investigated. In fact, what makes blockchain attractive for smart cities is the design scheme and underlying protocols. The decentralized computational aspect of blockchain enhances the reliability of data transmission across network nodes. Each data transaction between nodes is recorded with a unique identifier and it is validated by consensus among agents within the system. Transaction transparency mitigates the risk of passing inaccurate information throughout the network. 

The proposed project aims at comprehensively studying the application of blockchain technology within various domains of transportation systems. Emphasis will be placed on growth areas, anticipated hurdles, research gaps, and potential integration solutions of blockchain in transportation system design. The comprehensive literature review will cover a broad spectrum ranging from information exchange in connected vehicles to supply chain logistics and smart transit payment systems. The analysis will extend further by constructing a simulation-based platform to investigate the implementation of a blockchain-based fare payment system in transit. Within this simulation analysis, security, risk mitigation, failure prevention, and privacy preservation will be delved into. ]]></description>
      <pubDate>Tue, 13 May 2025 19:01:58 GMT</pubDate>
      <guid>https://rip.trb.org/View/2553154</guid>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>Blockchain-Based Defense for ML/DL Models and IoV Cyber Attacks</title>
      <link>https://rip.trb.org/View/2549188</link>
      <description><![CDATA[Insurers continuously seek cost-effective and reliable technologies to accurately determine liability and streamline claims processing in autonomous vehicle accidents. Recent advancements in autonomous vehicles (AVs) and blockchain technology offer several promising benefits, such as immutable accident records that enhance claims verification. However, blockchain’s high storage and computational demands, combined with its unstable integrated performance of AVs and wireless vehicular networks, have hindered its widespread adoption in the insurance sector. In this project, the research team first introduces a novel blockchain-assisted insurance optimization framework that models the end-to-end process, starting with traffic accident data collection and transmission by AVs through vehicular networks and ending with the recording of the traffic accident data on a blockchain. Second, to mitigate the additional operational costs of blockchain, the research team formulates an optimization model that quantifies the incremental profit when transitioning from AI-based to blockchain-assisted insurance. The blockchain-assisted insurance model balances blockchain operating expenses against the incremental benefits derived from improved fraud detection driven by the blockchain-provided traffic accident data, thereby identifying the optimal expenditure on blockchain resources. The optimization model incorporates constraints to model a real scenario, such as traffic accident data uploads, vehicular network capacity, and blockchain throughput. Simulation results based on a real dataset demonstrate that insurers can achieve an average incremental profit exceeding $8.20 per claim at the optimal point. Furthermore, the research team's analysis identifies the conditions under which vehicular networks or blockchain become a bottleneck and provides end‐to‐end parameter settings for AVs, vehicular networks, blockchain, and insurers to achieve optimal utility while reducing resource usage.
]]></description>
      <pubDate>Mon, 05 May 2025 15:33:23 GMT</pubDate>
      <guid>https://rip.trb.org/View/2549188</guid>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>Exploring Safety and Security Accident-Management Policies for CAVs</title>
      <link>https://rip.trb.org/View/2548664</link>
      <description><![CDATA[The adoption of self-driving Connected and Automated Vehicles (CAV) in combination with advanced vehicle technology (AVT) has been actively pursued to enhance road traffic safety and decrease the occurrence of accidents. However, despite these concerted efforts, collisions have not been eliminated. Despite in-depth exploration into the management of Accident-Management (AM-) Policies, it is evident that this exploration in isolation may not be adequate to guarantee the secure management of traffic. This inadequacy originates from the absence of a robust mechanism for enforcement. To overcome these shortcomings, this project introduces a distributed, multi-user, multi-vehicle framework for the specification, evaluation, and enforcement of AM-Policies in the context of CAVs. To this end, this project will explore user needs from the viewpoints of passengers and bystanders and define potential AM-Policies based on varying case scenarios including CAV configurations, incidents, accidents, etc. Also, the research team introduces a theoretical model for AM-Policies leveraging Attribute-based Access Control (ABAC) for policy specification, analysis, and conflict resolution. Second, the team leverage blockchain technology to establish a decentralized framework for policy management that does not necessitate dependence on a single entity within the system, utilizing smart contracts to efficiently implement autonomous and binding agreements modeling the proposed AM-Policies. Third, the team proposes a multi-modal deep model for informative and accurate decision-making, such that different types of sensor signals and visual inputs, which are needed for successfully evaluating and enforcing AM-Policies, can be effectively incorporated. ]]></description>
      <pubDate>Wed, 30 Apr 2025 15:58:11 GMT</pubDate>
      <guid>https://rip.trb.org/View/2548664</guid>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>Towards Deployment-Ready Post-Quantum Cryptography Enabled Vehicle-to-Everything Communication </title>
      <link>https://rip.trb.org/View/2531081</link>
      <description><![CDATA[Today’s vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communication relies on the IEEE 1609.2 standard, which defines secure message formats and processing for V2X communications in intelligent transportation systems. V2X communication relies heavily on cryptographic security to protect and safeguard sensitive information transmitted between vehicles, transportation infrastructure, and other entities. However, the rise of quantum computers poses significant cyber threats because they can break the security provided by current cryptographic algorithms, such as Rivest–Shamir–Adleman (RSA) and Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC). In addition, directly integrating the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)-approved Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) schemes presents challenges due to larger key sizes, higher computational demands, and stringent latency requirements. These limitations result in increased transmission delays, channel congestion, and the risk of packet loss, jeopardizing real-time communication and system efficiency. While hybrid PQC solutions have been explored, they primarily focus on outdated Dedicated Short-Range Communication (DSRC) frameworks and create gaps in adapting these solutions for Cellular V2X (C-V2X), which is the emerging standard for vehicular communication. Moreover, current PQC schemes require innovative adaptations to fit within the strict packet size constraints imposed by IEEE 1609.2 without compromising system performance. Addressing these challenges, the overarching goal of this project is to enhance the security and quantum resilience of V2X communication systems through three key objectives: (1) develop efficient algorithms for solving the hard problems that form the security foundation of PQC schemes and assess the trade-offs between key sizes and security levels; (2) design and implement a certificate segmentation algorithm for integrating PQC into the IEEE 1609.2 security standard to enable reliable, low-latency, and quantum-resilient C-V2X communication; and (3) evaluate the performance of PQC schemes utilizing federated learning (FL)-based C-V2X applications in connected transportation systems. This project will directly contribute towards a deployment-ready PQC-enabled V2X communication for a secure and reliable connected transportation system. ]]></description>
      <pubDate>Mon, 31 Mar 2025 17:03:58 GMT</pubDate>
      <guid>https://rip.trb.org/View/2531081</guid>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>Enhancing Railway Track Data Measurements and Collection
System with Blockchain Technology- Use of Inter Blockchain Communications
</title>
      <link>https://rip.trb.org/View/2431591</link>
      <description><![CDATA[The public demand for railway safety continues to be a major concern for the railway operators, the public, and the government. The Federal Railway Administration has invested in the development of various equipment for rail data collection. The automated data collection equipment has been very successful, but in this era of cyber breaches, the receiving, sharing, and access to data are of paramount importance. Blockchain technology, although in its infancy will create an immutable record for the data, storage, and reporting if incorporated into the current automated data equipment. The main objective of this proposal is to develop a framework whereby blockchains will be used as lines of cyber defense and in storing and sharing railway track data and information.
The number of blockchain platforms and decentralized applications are increasing rapidly in the last few years. Most of the existing blockchain networks are operating in a standalone environment isolated from each other. This creates scalability issues and in most cases connectivity nightmares, therefore limiting the application of the technology. This will be achieved through the following sub-objectives: This approach will apply to both passengers, freight, and metro systems. This Blockchain model can further be connected to various railway information systems hence providing additional defense methods against hackers. The blockchain will provide some “sort of supply chain” so only authorized personnel can approve and share the information in real-time. The successful implementation of this project can be extended to other autonomous vehicle data collection systems. The project at this level will be based on a private blockchain.]]></description>
      <pubDate>Tue, 17 Sep 2024 17:36:04 GMT</pubDate>
      <guid>https://rip.trb.org/View/2431591</guid>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>Information Strategies in the Electric Vehicles (EV) Battery Reverse Supply Chain with Blockchain Technology</title>
      <link>https://rip.trb.org/View/2402272</link>
      <description><![CDATA[The average lifespan of lithium batteries is relatively short and a huge amount of electric vehicle (EV) batteries will be retired in the next decade, leading to considerable environmental concerns and sparking an influx of recycling enterprises into the battery industry. However, unauthorized recyclers often follow recycling processes that are not compliant with the established regulations, which may cause serious harm to the natural environment and humans, resulting in the idle capacity of the authorized recyclers who are unable to achieve economies of scale, and pose challenges such as lack of information sharing and product untraceability. This proposed project will examine the use of blockchain in the EV battery supply chain by answering the following questions: (1) What is the status quo of blockchain implementation in EV battery recycling? (2) How does unauthorized recycling affect the battery recovery supply chain? (3) What is the impact of blockchain technology on closed-loop supply chains (CLSC)? (4) What factors can motivate supply chain participants to adopt blockchain technology to facilitate battery recycling?]]></description>
      <pubDate>Fri, 12 Jul 2024 11:00:20 GMT</pubDate>
      <guid>https://rip.trb.org/View/2402272</guid>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>Secured Small-Key-Based Post Quantum Cryptographic Scheme for Blockchain-based VANET</title>
      <link>https://rip.trb.org/View/2335053</link>
      <description><![CDATA[Blockchain-based Vehicular Ad-hoc Network (VANET) architecture has been gaining popularity due to its distributed and decentralized architecture, efficient data transmission capability, and secure data generation and broadcasting ability over VANET networks. Rating-based or trust-value-based blockchain networks can efficiently play a trusted role by setting up the proof-of-work or proof-of-stake consensus mechanisms. Such a trust management system could ensure privacy-protected and secured vehicle-to-everything communication because of its ability to ensure the veracity of the exchanged messages via a digital signature of a message sender (e.g., vehicle). However, due to the high mobility of vehicles, small key-based encryption is necessary in VANET as it requires less complex computational operations and storage. 
Existing studies prove that a non-quantum computing-based or classical attack cannot generate a cyber attack on blockchain-based VANET because blockchain can identify the attacker through consensus-based or rating-based mechanisms, hashing, encryption, and its distributed nature with transparency in the public ledger-based approach. The blockchain-based architecture relies on two cryptographic mechanisms to provide security and trust: (1) check the integrity of the data itself using hash functions, and (2) check the ownership of the data with asymmetric cryptography. However, if a quantum algorithm can break the hash function or the cryptographic algorithm, it can create security concerns for any secure communication architectures, such as blockchain, as it uses an encryption technique (mostly on subgroup-finding algorithms utilizing factorization and discrete logarithm), e.g., Rivest-Shamir-Adleman and elliptic curve digital signature algorithms. On the other hand, although prior studies have been conducted on improving the ownership mechanism of blockchain and making it quantum-safe through post-quantum cryptography and quantum key distribution, post-quantum cryptography suffers from periodicity and symmetry. It uses large-size keys, which increase the complexity of the decryption of the key, such as a lattice-based architecture. Hash-based cryptography and multivariate cryptography exhibit a drawback in large signature sizes, leading to a larger block size and, consequently, larger memory size. Similarly, code-based cryptography encounters the issue of increasing complexity due to larger key sizes, demanding extensive memory storage, and the risk of decoding failures when utilizing smaller keys in specific scenarios.  Therefore, a novel lightweight Post Quantum Cryptographic (PQC)  solution, which could adapt to the dynamic VANET scenario and ensure security against quantum-based attacks, is needed according to the US NIST’s cybersecurity framework.
The overarching goal of this project is to develop a new small key-based PQC solution, the Diophantine Isogeny Key Exchange (DIKE) scheme, for VANET to ensure security against quantum-based attacks. Specifically, the objectives of this project are to (1) develop and implement a quantum-based attack model utilizing both quantum Shor’s and Grover’s algorithms on a blockchain-based VANET, which will highlight the need for a quantum-secured blockchain and (2) formulate a new PQC solution, DIKE, which relies on the integration of Diophantine equations and isogenies to provide a secure key exchange mechanism that is resilient against quantum attacks.
]]></description>
      <pubDate>Fri, 09 Feb 2024 19:33:59 GMT</pubDate>
      <guid>https://rip.trb.org/View/2335053</guid>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>Innovations Deserving Exploratory Analysis--The Transit IDEA Program. Multimodal Transit with Citopia</title>
      <link>https://rip.trb.org/View/1940157</link>
      <description><![CDATA[The emergence of Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) presents a promising solution to meet the growing demand for usage-based business models and effectively address pressing challenges in mobility and sustainability. However, most MaaS services today are offered by siloed centralized platforms, which lack the interoperability needed to connect distinct mobility services. These platforms also fall short of providing data privacy for riders and providers. To this end, MOBI created Citopia MaaS, a federated Web3 marketplace which provides a secure and easy-to-use mobile app for riders to seamlessly plan or book multimodal trips from different service providers with itinerary, ticketing, and payments all in one place. Citopia MaaS is designed to allow riders to select their trip preferences among fastest, cheapest, least number of transfers, and greenest routes; and choose their preferred mode(s) of transit such as bus, bike-as-a-service, and more. Citopia MaaS includes a web interface that enables service providers to securely onboard assets and offer services to riders via simple API integrations. Citopia uses the blockchain-based Integrated Trust Network (ITN) as the trust anchor for decentralized identity management. Citopia MaaS leverages state of the art Web3 technologies to enable a seamless and secure MaaS experience while redefining data privacy for riders and service providers. These technologies include Self-Sovereign Digital Twins™ (SSDTs™), World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Verifiable Credentials (VCs) and Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs), and Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKPs). DIDs allow the SSDTs™ of riders, vehicles, service providers, and other entities to communicate and transact with each other via VCs. VCs are coupled with ZKPs to add greater data privacy so that riders have full ownership and control of their Personally Identifiable Information (PII). This Citopia MaaS Transit IDEA project successfully demonstrated seamless MaaS planning, booking, trip execution, and payments by leveraging Web3 technologies and ensuring rider and service provider data privacy.]]></description>
      <pubDate>Mon, 11 Apr 2022 17:14:54 GMT</pubDate>
      <guid>https://rip.trb.org/View/1940157</guid>
    </item>
    <item>
      <title>Airport Blockchain Implementation Guidebook</title>
      <link>https://rip.trb.org/View/1528519</link>
      <description><![CDATA[The concept of blockchain emerged approximately 10 years ago as the architecture underlying the cryptocurrency Bitcoin. The idea of blockchain is to create open, distributed ledgers or data that can be shared across many different nodes (i.e., each computer within the network of computers). Blockchain can be public, non-permissioned (anyone can initiate and validate a transaction on that blockchain), or private/permissioned (only certain parties can initiate and validate a transaction).
 
Since the concept emerged, blockchain has been recognized for its potentially broad applicability beyond financial or currency transactions, for example, to set up “smart contracts” that use a highly complex and contingent set of criteria and conditions that, when met, automatically and rapidly trigger a transaction. Blockchain offers several key advantages, including increased security and control over transactions, increased speed of transactions, decreased cost of transactions and data sharing, and expanded opportunities for more complex transactions. Blockchain could also be used to incentivize efficiency, transparency, and good behavior across parties.
 
In the airport industry, potential applications for blockchain include security and identification, flight data management, airport resource management, safety and maintenance, baggage and cargo tracking, regulatory compliance, and more. Recent use cases include, offering blockchain applications specific to health and well-being aspects within the built environment, COVID-19 for passenger health verification and contact tracing, facilitating a contactless passenger experience, and tracking the movement of healthcare supplies and pharmaceuticals (including vaccines) from origin to final destination.
 
While blockchain guidance may be available for other industries, there is currently no airport-specific implementation guidance available.  

The objective of this research is to develop detailed guidance for the implementation of blockchain and associated technologies to provide business solutions, operational efficiencies, and improved transparency for airport decision-makers and stakeholders.
]]></description>
      <pubDate>Tue, 31 Jul 2018 20:10:07 GMT</pubDate>
      <guid>https://rip.trb.org/View/1528519</guid>
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