Masterarbeit
A Trust-aware and Solid-based Decentralized Travel Planning Web Application
Completion
2024/03
Research Area
Students
Brent Benofsky
Advisers
Description
This thesis focuses on an approach to addressing the growing concerns of data sovereignty, and user trust in the digital travel industry. With the rapid technological advancements and the consequent rise in cyber threats, there's a pressing need for a travel planning solution that not only offers personalization and convenience but also ensures robust security for personal data. Central to this project is the implementation of a trust-aware Solid Pods usage. Solid is a technology that empowers users with full control over their data, and the introduction of a behind-the-scenes trust awareness layer is crucial for maintaining the integrity and reliability of information within such a data decentralized web application. This innovative web application aims to revolutionize travel planning by ensuring robust data protection and rebuilding user trust in digital platforms.
The proposed web application leverages Solid Pods to provide users with a personal, secure storage environment for their travel-related data. This feature is pivotal in enabling users to exercise full control over who can access their data, thus effectively addressing the critical issues of privacy breaches and unauthorized data usage. Meanwhile, the trust awareness layer functions discreetly within the business logic of the platform. Invisible to users, this layer autonomously evaluates the trustworthiness of data sources and recommendations. By processing various inputs, including user preferences and third-party data, it guides the application in prioritizing and presenting the most reliable and relevant travel options to users. This seamless integration of Solid Pods and the trust layer ensures that the platform not only offers a personalized and convenient travel planning experience but also upholds the highest standards of data sovereignty, and user trust, thereby setting a new benchmark in the digital travel industry.
The objective of this master thesis is to find an approach or combination of approaches to solve the previously mentioned problem in the context of trust-aware data processing for decentralized web applications within the travel planning scenario. This particularly includes the state of the art regarding Solid and Decentralized web applications. The demonstration of feasibility with an implementation demonstrator of the concept is part of this thesis as well as a suitable evaluation with exemplary use cases.
