Hello, everyone. My name is Junting Zhou. The title of our talk is Improving the MRLP-based security evaluation algorithm Against differential or linear correct analysis Using a divided conquer approach This is our joint work with Wenhao Zhang, Tian You Ding and Zhe Junxiang This is an offline of our talk Hopefully, we will reveal the existing MRLP tool For evaluating the security of a cycle Against differential and linear correct analysis Then we show our improved search algorithm Incorporating a divided conquer approach And finally, we show some applications Differential and linear correct analysis Are two of the most effective and powerful attacks To analyze symmetric key primitives Being able to resist the true attack Is an important criterion for designing symmetric key primitives To evaluate the security of a cycle Against differential or linear correct analysis There are usually two approaches One is to calculate the minimum number of active X boxes And the other is to search for the best differential or linear correct characteristics In recent years, a method based on MRLP Is proposed for the security evaluation Due to its easy to master and general to use features The MRLP-based method has been widely used This kind of method is firstly proposed by Mocha in 2011 They introduced a model framework to calculate lower bounds Of the minimum number of active X boxes For order-oriented cycles The model consists of an objective function And linear constants The objective function is to minimize the sum of variable A Representing input words of X boxes of H rounds The constants are used to describe what level difference Or linear mask propagation through a cycle Then from 2013 to 2014 Soon extended Mocha's model framework to bid-oriented cycles Their models describe bid-wise operations That can be used to both obtain the minimum number of active X boxes And find the best differential and linear correct characteristics In 2018 Just bid up to the resolution time of solving MRLP models By incorporating matrix, branch, and bound search algorithms However, the efficiency of existing MRLP-based methods Is not enough The model can't be solved with a reasonable time What the number of rounds is large Next, we introduce our search algorithm Our motivation is to make the MRLP-based method More efficient So that we can use it to derive better evaluation Of cryptanalytic results of symmetric primitives Against differential and linear cryptanalysis In this talk, by using a divided-concrete approach We propose an improved MRLP-based search algorithm For evaluating the security of symmetric primitives Against differential and linear cryptanalysis The algorithm is applied to five lightweight block cypress In this talk And also applicable to other symmetric primitives This table summarizes the comparison of the results On best differential and linear correct characteristics Between two previous work and hours We implement the three methods on our PC And T1, T2, T3 respectively denote the resolution time Of the three methods From the table, we see that our search algorithm Has an advantage over the two other methods The number of rounds is large And for each cypher, we cover more rounds with less time The two approaches Calculating the minimum number of active S-boxes And searching for best differential or linear characteristics Are respectively equivalent to search for the correct characteristics With the minimum number of active S-boxes And with the minimum weight Our search algorithm is inspired by the idea Of a divided-concrete approach Our search process is as follows Firstly, we divide the whole search space Naming the site of our possible iron characteristics Into smaller subsites Then we separately search each of the subsites by using MILP And obtain the optimal characteristics within them Finally, the optimal characteristic within the whole site Is given by combining all the results returned from the subsites Next, we introduce the first step How to divide the site We divide the site for experienced cypher Based on observation 1 For many lightweight block cypher with experienced structure While its differential or linear characteristics Have at least one active S-box in each round And those with the highest probability Of absolute linear pairs Are likely to have at most two active S-boxes At a certain length Next, for an R-long experienced cypher We first divide the whole site into three kinds of subsites In sub-site 1, the characteristics Have at least one active S-box in each round And there is at least one long contents Exactly one active S-box Sub-site 2 is similar to sub-site 1 The characteristics in each Have at least two active S-boxes in each round And there is at least one long contents Exactly two active S-boxes Sub-site 3 includes the characteristics That have at least three active S-boxes in each round For sub-site 1 and sub-site 2 The characteristics have one or two active S-boxes At a certain length Thus we further divide the two subsites By fixing the index i Such that round i has exactly one or two active S-boxes By doing this The number of all possibilities Of inputs of round i decreases Then we show us the input of round i To further divide the two subsites Take an SPN site for present as an example Its long size is 64 bits And it uses a 4 x 4 S-box We show how to divide the site for an round size Firstly, the whole site is divided Into three subsites introduced in the previous page Then sub-site 1 is divided By choosing i such that round i Has exactly one active S-box And for each i, choosing inputs of round i When one round has exactly one active S-box There are 240 possibilities of inputs of this round In total, sub-site 1 is divided Into r times 240 smaller subsites Similar to the partition of sub-site 1 Sub-site 2 is further divided When one round has exactly two active S-boxes There are 27,000 possibilities of inputs of this round In total, sub-site 2 is divided Into r times 27,000 smaller subsites Now, the site for an R-round present has been divided Unlike SPN ciphers, for fester ciphers The differential or linear characteristics With the highest probability of absolute linear bias Are likely to have no active S-box at a certain length That's for an R-round fester cipher We divide the whole site into two kinds of subsites In sub-site 0, the characteristics have no active S-box at a certain length And in sub-site 1, the characteristics have at least one active S-box in each round For sub-site 0, we further divide it by fixing the index i Such that round i contains no active S-box The subsites divided now are not small enough Thus, we further divide the sites that show the importance of S-boxes Of active round i plus 1 Take a fester cipher L-block as an example Its block size is 64 bits, and it uses a 4 times 4 S-box For an R-round L-block, we first divide the sites Into the two subsites introduced before Then sub-site 0 is further divided by choosing index i Such that round i has no active S-box If round i has no active S-box There is at least one active S-box at round i plus 1 By choosing pydons of S-boxes at round i plus 1 There are 255 subsites for each i In summary, the site for an R-round L-block is divided into R times 255 plus 1 smaller subsites Now we have shown that how to divide the sites for SPN and fester ciphers Next, we will introduce how to search each of the subsites by using a myLP To search a subsite divided We first build an myLP model by using existing work The model is used to search for the optimal characteristic for an R-round cipher And its fester region is the site of all possible R-round characteristics By adding additional constants into the model The fester region of the model is exactly the subsite Therefore, searching a subsite is equivalent to selling an myLP model For fester region is exactly the subsite To build such models, we introduce the additional constants for describing the subsites For the subsites divided for an R-round SPN cipher Characteristics in them are constrained by the following two constants In constant 1, there are at least NA active S-boxes in each round except for a certain round i This constant is described by the equation 1 The second constant is that the input from i equals a value of delta This constant is described by the equation 2 For the subsites divided for an R-round fester cipher Characteristics in them are constrained by the two constants Constant 1 is the same as the constant 1 for SPN cipher Constant 2 shows that the difference of linear mass patterns of the S-boxes at round i and i plus 1 are equal to zeros and a vector p respectively This constant is described by the equation 3 Now we can search a subsite by selling an myLP model The model's beautiful searching subsites have smaller peaceful regions Thus are easier to be solved than the model with a whole site However, it will cost a huge amount of time if we sell all the models There are two main reasons One is that the number of subsites divided is generally large Referring the subsites divided for an R-round present The other reason is that selling some of the models beautiful searching the subsites are time consuming For example, the model whose peaceful region is subsite 3 for SPN cipher Thus several technicals are needed to further improve the efficiency Revealing that our goal is to search for the R-round characteristic with the minimum number of active S-boxes or with the minimum weight We introduce three technicals in the second step of the search process The first technical is similar to the strategy used in Matei's branch and bound search algorithm At the beginning of the search, we generate a valid R-round characteristic and use it as the currently optimal R-round characteristic Its number of active S-boxes or weight is searched as an upper bound of the minimum number of active S-boxes or weight for the R-round cipher We generate such an R-round characteristic by exploding one of the optimal R-minus 1-round characteristic we have found for an R-round cipher by fixing the first or the last R-minus 1-round to have the patterns of S-boxes same as those of the optimal R-minus 1-round characteristic We generate a valid R-round characteristic During the search of subsites, if we found an R-round characteristic having a number of active S-boxes or weight smaller than the upper bound the currently optimal R-round characteristic is updated by it and the upper bound is updated by its number of active S-boxes or weight To reduce unnecessary searches, we only focus on the subsites in which the characteristics have smaller number of active S-boxes or weight than the upper bound Thus, the second technique is to estimate a lower bound of the minimum number of active S-boxes or weight within the subsites If the lower bound is greater than or equal to the upper bound there is no better characteristic and we terminate the search of the subsites To calculate the lower bound, one method is to split R-round into smaller parts, then combine them A lower bound for R-round is estimated by combining lower bounds for exact values for the smaller parts In addition, the lower bound can be updated by solving MILP models In order to make technique 2 more efficient, we aim to find better characteristics as early as possible The third technique is to choose a proper search order of the subsites divided There are two cases we can take into account The first one is that we preferentially search the subsites which are more likely to provide better characteristics The second is that preferentially searching the subsites whose corresponding MILP models can be solved within less time We apply our search algorithm to three SPN ciphers and two FISTEL ciphers For each of the five ciphers, we obtain the minimum number of differentially and linearly active S-boxes and fast differential and linear characteristics Our experiment is performed on a PC and we use the openly available software Groovy to sell MILP models This is the result of present for the forecast of experiments we respectively reached for up to 31, 18, 31, and 18 rounds Our results on the minimum number of differentially active S-boxes are the same as the results in this paper However, these values are claimed to be lower bound in this paper, where we found they are exact values Compared to the results on best differential characteristics in this paper, we cover more rounds GIFT is an SPN cipher similar to present We focus on a version GIFT 74 with 64-bit block size We obtain the forecast of experiments for up to 16, 15, 15, and 13 rounds respectively We improve the probability for 9 round characterity given by the designers and get better results compared to the results of the two papers by using MILP methods Rectangle is an SPN cipher proposed in 2015 For rectangle, we obtain the forecast of experiments for up to 16, 15, 16, and 14 rounds respectively Our results on the best differential and linear characteristics are the same as those given by the designers L block and T1 are two similar physical ciphers Both of them are world-warranted ciphers For L block, we obtain the forecast of experiments for up to 20, 16, 20, and 15 rounds respectively For T1, we obtain the forecast of experiments for up to 20, 15, 20, and 16 rounds respectively For both L block and T1, our results on the minimum number of active S-boxes are the same as those given by the designers We conclude our talk In this talk, we focus on improving the efficiency of MILP-based security evaluation algorithm against differential and linear corrupt analysis and propose and improve search algorithm by using a divide and conquer approach Applying our algorithm to five blood-on-weight block ciphers, we obtain better results than previous work For each cipher, we cover more rounds with lifetime compared to previous MILP-based measures Thus our algorithm is more efficient The future work for the five blood-on-weight block ciphers applied in this talk The permutation layers are all fit for mutation In future work, we will consider the ciphers as stronger permutation layer such as snoken and serpent For the results of the five ciphers we obtain, although the weight of the best differential or linear characteristics for some reduced rounds are larger than cipher's block ciphers or half of it We argue that it's possibly useful when the differential or linear clustering is attained into account For the security evaluation against related key differential corrupt analysis it seems to be more difficult and requires more work In the related key schedule, there are plenty of possibilities of brown keys Compared to a single key model, a related key model is more difficult to be solved because its size is larger Thus we didn't find a proper way to divide the whole size such that both the number of subsides divided is not too large and the model view for subsides is solved within a short time These are references That's all. Thanks for your attention


Good evening and welcome to today's midweek prayer meeting before we start. I'd like us to pray. Let us pray. I have a little further. Thank you so much for this wonderful evening, dear Lord, as we are going to have this prayer meeting. May you be with us from the start till the end. I pray for the speaker, dear Lord, may you speak to us through her. In Jesus' name I pray amen. We'll worship in song and we'll start with song number 595. Let every lamp be burning. Let every lamp be burning bright. The darkest hour is nearing. The darkest hour of a long night. Before the Lord's appearing. Then trimmy breath rendee. Then trimmy Godly fee. The mast is coming. Drow thousands come. First grace message is burning. We'll rest our living faith upon his promise of return. Godly fee. The mast is coming. Let every lamp be burning. Is what a lamp his truth our guide. We cannot be mistaken. Though dangers rise on every side. We shall not be forsaken. Then trimmy Godly fee. The mast is coming. Let every lamp be burning. Let good works with faith appear. To have the world around. We didn't springs. The blessing leaf has firmly bound. Godly fee. The mast is coming. Let every lamp be burning. We'll turn to song number 554. Or let me walk with thee. 554. Let me walk yet see. I cannot dare not walk. To be found from the book of judges for whole chapter. Before we read, let's pray. Our God and our Father, Lord, we come before you this evening to say thank you for the whole day. Lord, as we are going to read your word, may it find a place in our hearts to learn more about you. And even to bring us more closer to you for in Jesus' name I pray. Amen. Okay, I'll read judges 4. When Elliot was dead, the children of Israel again did evil in the sight of the Lord. So the Lord sold them into the hands of Jabin, king of Kanan, who raised in Heza. The commander of his army was Cicera, who dwelt in Herosef, Hagojim. And the children of Israel cried out to the Lord for Jabin and the 900 chariots of iron. And for 20 years he had harshly oppressed the children of Israel. Now Deborah, a prophetess, the wife of Lapidoth was judging Israel at that time. And she would sit under the palm tree of Deborah between Rama and Bethel in the mount of Ephraim. And the children of Israel came to her for judgment. Then she sent and called for Barak, the son of Abinom, from Kedesh in Naftali and said to him, Has not the God of Israel commanded, go and deploy troops at Mount Taba. Take with you then 10,000 men of the sons of Naftali and of the sons of Zebolam.  And I will deliver them into your hand. And Barak said to her, if you will go with me, then I will go. But if you will not go with me, I will not go. So she said, I will surely go with you. Nevertheless, there will be no glory for you in the journey you are taking. For the Lord will sell Cicera into the hands of a woman. Then Deborah arose and went with Barak to Kedesh. And Barak called Zebolam and said, sorry, Barak called Zebolam and Naftali to Kedesh. And he went up with the 10,000 and under his command and Deborah went up with him. Now Heba, the Kenite of the children of Habub, the father in law of Moses, had separated himself from the Kenites and pitched his tent near the Terebeth tree at Zanim, which is beside Kedesh. And they reported to Cicera that Barak, the son of Abinom, had gone up to Mount Teba. So Cicera gathered together all his chariots, 900 chariots of iron, and all the people who were with him from Harosheth, Hajoyim, to the river Kishon. Then Deborah said to Barak, up! For this is the day in which the Lord has delivered Cicera into your hand. Has not the Lord gone out before you? So Barak went down from Mount Teba with 10,000 men following him. And the Lord rooted Cicera and all his chariots and all his army with the age of the sword before Barak. And Cicera alighted from his chariot and fled away on foot. But Barak pursued the chariots and the army as far as Harosheth, Hajoyim, and all the army of Cicera fell by the age of the sword, not a man was left. However, Cicera had fled away on foot to the tent of Jail, the wife of Hiba, the Kanaite. For there was peace between Jabim King of Heza and the house of Hiba, the Kanaite. And Jail went out to meet Cicera and said to him, turn aside, my Lord, turn aside to me, do not fear. And when he had turned aside with her into the tent, she covered him with a blanket. Then he said to her, please give me a little water to drink. For I am thirsty, so she opened a jug of milk, gave him a drink and covered him. And he said to her, stand at the door of the tent. And if any man comes inquiries of you and says, is there any man here, you shall say no. Then Jail, Hiba's wife took a tent peg and took a hammer into her hand and went softly to him and drove the peg into the temple. And it went down into the ground, for he was fast asleep and weary, so he died. And then, as Barak pasud Cicera, Jail came out to meet him and said to him, come, I will show you the man who you seek. And when he went into her tent, there lay Cicera dead with the peg in the temple. So on that day, God subdued Jabim King of Kenan in his presence of the children of Israel. And the hand of the children of Israel grew stronger and stronger against Jabim King of Kenan until they had destroyed Jabim King of Kenan. May God bless the world. We'll turn to our hymno for the opening song, which is 608, Faith is the Victory. Faith is the battle if the night shall veil the glowing skies. Against the fall in veils below, let all our strength be heard. Faith is the vision's health he shall know. Faith is worship service today. We invite the Holy Spirit to be our instructor. Even as we study the meaning of the word that you've blessed us with this evening, that you may be able to apply it into our lives, and that our lives will not be the same again. We want to pray you forgive us our sins, that my father, we may be receptive and nothing will stand in the way of your blessing for us as we have this prayer service. In Jesus name I pray and believe. Amen. Good evening. It's good to be here. And I'd like to welcome all of you, those who are in the sanctuary today and those who are watching online to our midweek prayer meeting this first day of November 2023. And I want to thank my friend and my sister for reading this long scripture so well and following with Jesus pattern where they would read the scripture and then it would be discussed after. The topic today is courage and empowerment and we are looking at the story of Deborah. Colin's dictionary describes courage as the quality of mind or spirit that enables a person to face difficulty, danger or pain without fear. What comes to mind if I was to ask you what courage synonyms like bravery, valor, guts, endurance, intrepidity or prowess may come to mind. Bibilically, courage means trusting the Lord as our true source of strength. Courage is a quality possessed by individuals of conviction and restraint. Empowerment on the other hand immediately probably brings to your mind the word of having authority or power given to someone to do something. Bibilically to give power is to authorize, permit or enable someone to achieve the impossible. My favorite description of empowerment is the release of God's ability to achieve His will. Let's get a bit of background. We have a judge called Deborah, but what really happened to the children of Israel? I like this man Paul, he was very educated and he knew how to do, is it a synopsis or an introduction to a whole write up. In the book of Acts chapter 13 and verse 20, you can start from verse 16, but let me start in 17. He summarized the life of the Israelites in three or four short verses. That is prior to the story of Deborah. He said the God of this nation Israel chose our ancestors. He then honored them in Egypt by leading them out of their slavery. He then nursed them through the 40 years of wandering in the wilderness. He destroyed seven nations in Canaan. He gave Israel their land as an inheritance and judges ruled Israel for about 450 years. When we take a sneak preview back right there where this is playing out, we have this man of God called Joshua who is about to die. He knows this dealing with people that are stiff neck that keep forgetting. He reminds them in the last paragraphs of the book of Joshua of all of God's doings and treated them to be faithful. They promised to be faithful which he wrote down and lodged away somewhere and the famous script that says, as for me and my house we shall serve the Lord is born there. He told them that if they obeyed God, the good that they were already enjoying would continue to be theirs. But if they disobeyed God, that God could literally wipe them out and his anger would rise hot against them. So this story now moves to judges the period 400 BC to 1050 BC. Remember during this time judges are the highest civil authority and in most cases someone by God to serve the people by divine appointment. So the children of Israel have spent 40 years in the desert. They are now already entering Canaan and their trade during the 40 years in the wilderness had become nomadic in nature. So they come to a land of milk and honey that they had been promised where there was everything growing well. To land of Canaanites where the Canaanites were traders, they were agriculturalists and they were very good in the art of war. They also worshipped Baal, they worshipped El, that's EL, they worshipped Anath, Astoret among other deities and they really displeased God because among some of the practices they did were abominations against God, sexual immorality and even brutal acts of like murdering and killing children at the altars of their gods. So what happened? The Israelites quickly adapted agricultural practices alongside idolatry practices. Now when Joshua died they asked God what they should do. They had already been allocated where they were supposed to conquer and settle. Now listen to how this played out and I'll just read some of them. The house of Judah goes fast. They asked the Lord and God was with them and they won several battles and you will see this in the book of Judges chapter 1 from around verse 1 to 19 or 20 thereabouts. So many battles they won more than seven and then something happened. The last battle they fought, they failed to conquer the people of the valley. So what happened? They stayed with them. Then there is a faithful tribe, a faithful house, the house of Kaleb. Then they conquered Hebron the way they had been commanded. How are they supposed to do this? They had been instructed to drive out the people they find in these places they've been allocated. They'll drive them out either physically or by burning down everything and destroying everything and starting afresh. The house of Benjamin. Oh, what did they do? They spared some jebusites. So what happened? They continued staying together with these jebusites they spared. Joseph's house. You'd think this would be perfectly run. They conquered Bethel but they spared one man. The man who thought who they met at the city gate to give them secrets that enabled them to disseminate their city. But they spared one man who went on to Syria and started the city of Luz which is there up to date according to the Bible. Manase. The house of Manase did not even drive out anybody in their city or in the neighboring towns. They just moved in. The house of Zebulam. They did not kill everybody. They killed some and then they left some people as slaves. The house of Asha. They didn't even drive out anyone. The house of Naftali. The house of Dan. Of the people they found. I think they entered a treaty like you, servers will spare your lives. The house of Dan. They did not even succeed in driving out anyone. They were even evicted to the mountains by the people they were supposed to drive out. So this is the recipe for disaster. These people mingled with the kana nights they met. They intermarried. The kana nights married their own children. So they became one big happy community but the result was devastating. They disobeyed God and they did idolatry. So God left their presence and God allowed them to be tortured and mishandled by the surrounding kingdoms. I'll give you an example. There were a number of judges but I'll just mention only three for the purpose of the discourse for tonight. So after Joshua died they disobeyed and for eight years God left them to the Masi of the King of Mesopotamia. And they were harassed, they suffered and then they remembered and asked God for help and God sent Othaniel. Othaniel was a judge in Israel. And so while Othaniel lived for 40 years they had peace. Then Othaniel died. After Othaniel died, can you imagine they forgot? I keep wondering in eight years even if you trained a child in Pathfinder for eight years, how quickly do they forget God and go back to their former life. But that's exactly what the children of Israel did. So for 18 years they suffered again away from God. Then they remembered and asked God for Masi and God sent Ehud. He delivered them from King Eglon of Moab and for eight years they had peace. Then Ehud died. And after Ehud died they again forgot God. And for 20 years they lived in bondage under King Jabin of Hazor. Now this king doesn't come alone. He comes as a package. He had Sisera, the captain of the army that bullied and tortured the children of Israel. I want us to just figure out what was happening the time God called Deborah to be a judge in Israel. The children of Israel had been bullied into a corner by this strong-handed man called Sisera. He ensured that there were soldiers packed in many places along the way so they could no longer use the main roads. They used back roads. They were so bullied that commerce ceased. They were so bullied and harassed and terrorized that according to judges chapter 5 and verse 6 to 8 and allow me to read it, it says that in those days highways were unoccupied and the travelers walked through byways. The inhabitants of the villages ceased. They ceased in Israel until I, Deborah, arose a mother in Israel. You can imagine whole villages vanishing. And the kind of calf you put them, I think with all sobaness, we thank God we are here. And it's very sobering when I look back at the last three years of our world's history. Imagine what we went through during the season of COVID. Governments made decrease. They made us stay in our homes. We could not walk certain times. People ran out of food. People died. People lost loved ones. People could not even bury their dead. You can imagine this children of Israel, this was the way of life for 20 years. We suffered for about 2 years. They suffered for 20 years. These people were so used to suffering that it took so long for them to cry out to God again. And God called to Deborah and she arose. Who is this Deborah? In Africa we sometimes identify married women and not their own names. I'm glad that she addresses herself as Deborah in Judges chapter 5. But assume we are here in Africa and then I'll say, Mrs. Lapidoth is the woman that became the prophet for Israel. Who is Mrs. Lapidoth? She was a prophetess. She was a judge in Israel. The only human being that I know in my Bible cover to cover we even had a tree named after her because she used to judge at the palm of Deborah. This was at some raised ground where she judged cases and brought peace between worrying people from Israel. Not only that, she prophesied directly on any word God gave her and she helped bring back sanity among the children of Israel. So she was brave, she was obedient to God, she served God during a terrible time and she had a great anointing. She was impeccable. There is no speck that is talked about in her character that brings any doubt about who she was in her character and upbringing and the way she lived her life. She was respected and she was respectful. She was a poet and a worship leader. It tells me that she must have been fairly educated and maybe in fairly high ranking status even among the Israelites despite all the harrowing troubles they went through. So what lessons do we pick from this amazing woman of God? First thing I learned is she was the first woman judge. It tells me that God can use anyone he pleases regardless of gender, race, age or abilities. What is your excuse? Is it I'm a woman? Is it I'm too young? Is it I'm too old? Is it I come from this kind of race and in my race people don't worship this kind of God? What are our excuses? By the way, especially to the gender of the females in the world, this history has been carrying through. Fortune 500 companies, the report shows that only 10% of the Fortune 500 companies are female CEOs and the world is so delighted because a year or two ago it was 8%. I want us to pick a lesson from some of these other players that we have here. I want to first of all talk about Sisera. Whenever the name Sisera is mentioned, it's mentioned in connection with the 900 ion chariot that he had. Have we put our faith and trust in chariot? He was a commander, he was a hash man he was keen and he was swift. As soon as he saw the army of Israel had gathered, he gathered his entire army and all the 900 chariot and he went down to go fight them. Now this man with his army, what God had planned is that the river where the war was going to happen and by the way, people, geography experts even now tell us that that river has such thick mud. If the rain falls for 15 minutes, it is hard to even walk on it. So are we then surprised that the horses that were pulling the chariot could not move and a very harrowing report is put in the Bible that tells us that the horses' legs even got broken and a horse with a broken leg is useless. And all the chariot vanished and all the men got killed by Israel's army. And this man, Sisera, when he found that everybody had gone down, he ran away on foot. Suddenly the horses could not help him, the chariot could not help him and he ran to a place where he thought he could get help and he meets our favorite Jail here and she encourages him to take a break at her tent and he asks for a drink of water and he is given milk. Now the kind of milk he was given is not fresh milk. She didn't go to milk or cow or camel. Historians say that she had cattle milk, full fat milk and this milk is very richer. It has hypnagogic effects or it helps you to fall asleep. It's like a luxury. It actually provides like sensory pleasure and the guy was able to sleep. So I want to ask a question. What is it that we are eating or consuming either through the food we eat, through our five senses, what we hear, what we see, where we go, what we do that is giving us sensory pleasure and it is darling the brain from listening to the voice of God. What is it in our life that we are doing or saying that is reducing our spiritual alertness? I want to go back to this amazing lady Jail. Jail was even like another tribe, married to another tribe. I think we understand that in the concept of Africa. They say she was Bedwin and wife of Heber, the Kenite. We know the Kenites were relatives of Moses in laws. Now the whole team of the Kenites, when they came they settled somewhere and I'm going to give that as homework to you to find out where as we chambua scripture. So they all settled but this one family moved. This one family moved and they happened to be in the way that Sisera passed. They were there by divine appointment. So let me now talk about this lady that we have come to admire who became the heroine in this story of the war that Deborah led. This lady, I think when she saw Sisera and I want to say with all due respect I don't think she was a murderer. She did not have weapons of murder in her tent. In fact they were very peaceful family. And this family happened to be at peace with the Kenites and Sisera knew it. So she lured him. She thought the Israelites would be hot on his heels. So she welcomed him. She covered him with a shawl which was very special in Israel by the way. There was some for honor and some for use at night and it was so important that God did not even allow you to take someone's gown because they used it at night when they slept. She covered him and after giving milk he fell deep asleep. She must have stood at the door as instructed and she must have waited and nobody came and she realized soon he would be awake.  So she used what was available to her, a tent peg and I think with viewer discretion because this must be a very scary image then she put the peg through Sisera's head and he died and that is how God gave the battle over to a woman. Now there's this man called Barak. Barak was an amazing guy. He mobilized 10,000 soldiers and all but when he was told to go and fight Sisera he gave another condition. God is calling us to unconditional obedience because he gave conditions and demanded that first of all he goes with the prophet means he did not have confidence in his faith. He actually used Debra as a handbag to even round up the 10,000 guys and tell them Debra is coming with us, there is war we are going to win. Debra said that she is coming with us. He did not have confidence in his ability as God had spoken to him. Could God be empowering us today and he has given us the courage to be able to do stuff. Walk in faith and walk in abundance and be able to serve him and we are making excuses thinking I must go with my pastor. Your neighbor is sick. You cannot offer a prayer because you need to call a pastor in. You see a child in the street and you could help but you are like I think the police should do that. Do we make excuses? We may lose the stars on our crown by not obeying when God speaks to us directly. I want to bring this down to one other party that I really want us to catch up with in Judges Chapter 5 and verse 23. This is a very important one and I don't want us to lose the lesson. Now, when the battle was won, Debra wrote this amazing poem in Chapter 5 of Judges and it's said to be the first and it's one of the most amazing poems and they praised and worshiped God and she says in verse 23. Kasi meroz say the angel of the Lord Kasi bitali the inhabitants thereof because they came not to the help of the Lord to the help of the Lord against the mighty. Now, just imagine what could have happened when all the houses of Israel were asked to come to war. A number of them, two houses just said immediately you got all of us, some send bans, some had to do what we do today. Call a church board, call a church business meeting. Oh, so and so the minutes are not yet out. Call consensus and then say no. We've got to discuss this better. We have to take this decision to the conference first. Oh, no, no, no. There were some of the tribes were so busy discussing whether they should go to war until the war was over and they missed the glory in participating and for not showing up the God sent an angel to cast them. Can you imagine that? This sends shivas down my spine. Could it be that due to inaction on my part and I know I've been guilty many times and I'm repenting. I don't know about you that stuff is happening and I do not participate and God will still have his way with or without me and God will send a curse for inactivity. During COVID, we raised money to support the needy and some people never gave a shilling that opportunity passed. This year we've had project for Hope Africa. We were told to invite people to watch people to come. Many of us are guilty for doing nothing. May Lord have mercy on us. But the recordings are still there will we do something about it. Some of us are keeping children in the house we are not bringing them to the Lord. Some of us, a child says let's take food to our neighbor. You look at how much it costs and you'd rather throw it away in the rubbish bin than give another person that needs it. Some of us live in gated communities are greeting a kind wife to the watchman we will not give. And we lose an opportunity that God has placed in our path. May God help us and forgive us for the things that we have failed to do. And may God take away the curse of meros from our medist as we purpose to be who he really meant us to be. I like what Martin Luther King said. He said, the silence of good people is more dangerous than the brutality of the bad people. In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies but the silence of our friends. Do we fail to speak up when we should? Do you know a neighbor who is going through abuse and you could help and you do nothing? Is it possible that you are gifted in understanding the word and you could start a Bible study and you are silent? May God help us be aware of the gifts and talent he has put in us so that when the time comes we are able to utilize this gift when he enables us to make use of them. The challenge today and my prayer for all of us before we move into a season of prayer is the book of Hebrews chapter 12 and verse 1. So I'm going to invite you to read that with me from your various versions and allow me to read from the version I have here. Hebrews chapter 12 and verse 1 and verse 2. Wherefore, seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight and the sin which doth so easily beset us and let us run with patience the rest that is set before us. Looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith who for the joy that was set before him endure the cross, despising the shame and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God. I pray today that we can have the courage to stand like Deborah. I pray today that we will take up the empowerment God has already given us that is ours with all the abilities and gifts he has put in us and that will not let God down. At this point, I'm going to request wherever we are if you have your family with you or you're by yourself those in the sanctuary and those in our homes I pray that we find the time to solemnly do some soul searching and beyond this prayer I'm trusting God that we will take time to continue to be in a mode of worship and soul searching and to mend and repair our ways that we will not be caught sitting inactive and passive where we should take action to the glory and honour of the name of the Lord. Let us pray our Father, our God we come before you you are a great and gracious God you are wanted to be worshiped you are wanted to be praised and none like you you have been there from the beginning of the world and you will be there beyond the end of the world and we are privileged to call you Abba Father we thank you for your goodness and your massi we thank you for your masses which are ever new we thank you for Jesus Christ and the blood of Jesus shed at Calvary for forgiveness of our sins and it's because of this that we come in confidence that when we confess our sins today you are faithful you are just you will deliver us and forgive us our sins as far as they may be from east to west and you will wash us as white as snow my father we pray today that you will give us a new beginning we thank you for the word that you've given us we thank you for the opportunity to be able to listen and to watch this word we pray that we will not be caught being inactive and sitting on our laurels anymore as we know about Jesus Christ we pray that we may be seekers of truth that we will intensify our task for knowledge that every single day my father we will start our day with the knowledge and acknowledgement of your lordship of our lives that we will seek to understand scripture more dearly that my father every day we will open our eyes both physical and spiritual eyes to the needs around us that you need us to fulfill oh my father that where you have enabled us to be the voice of reason to be your hands and feet and eyes and mouth that Jehovah God will not be found failing anymore I want to pray that when all these things happen and the victory has come through our actions and the opportunities you've given us that we'll be careful like Deborah to give all the glory and honor back to you we pray my father that nothing will hold us back that we will remember the courage of Deborah that we will remember that you have empowered us and that we remember that even those who have been feeling marginalized or disempowered that narrative has been rewritten so we thank you we worship you we glorify you for all you've done and all you will do because I've prayed in the precious name of our lord and saviour Jesus Christ amen may God bless you amen thank you for the wonderful sharing sister Phoebe we'd like us to turn to our hymnals for the closing song 602 O brother be faithful O brother be faithful Son Jesus will come for whom we have waited so long Oh soon we shall enter a glorious home and joy is sung such deep, such unbounded regions of angels its chariot attend and now may the grace of our lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with us now and forevermore amen


Thank you. Here we are. We just started recalling Jennifer. It's great to have you here. Left the stage straight to you. It's a great pleasure to have you. It's a very interesting topic. Stages just might be. And start speaking. Not much for intros. All right. No, not a problem. Thank you so, so much. It is an honor to be here and hopefully I will not bore anybody to tears. It's actually kind of an interesting intersection between technology and water. So I am hoping to be able to bring some of the information and insight that happens in my world to the tech sector. And that's kind of one of the things that we really wanted to be able to do with this talk today. So if you have any questions since I'm going to be doing sharing my screen for the slideshow, I won't be able to see the chat unless I purposely go look at it. But feel free to just kind of chime in at the end with any questions or if there's something burning that you have about that particular slide. Feel free to interrupt me. So this way it's a good conversation going throughout. So without further ado, we are going to start things off. Yes, I know. Go away. There we go. All right. So awesome. We see your screen. Fantastic. There we go. All right. So basically, this is a little bit different than what some of the previous talks have been about. I'm still going to hit on sustainability as the previous speaker mentioned a few weeks ago. But it's looking at something that we don't normally think about in supply chain management or especially not in trade finance, but it has something to do with both of those. And that's treating water and sanitation as a supply chain.  But also in May of 2020, I founded my own company, Intelligent Water Services. And it was looking at a lot of things that I had kind of picked up over the years as there has to be a better way of doing this. We can tackle these challenges if we look outside the box. And that spurred me to start IWS. So just kind of, you know, linked in on a slide. I'll be your tour guide for Water Industry 101. Please keep all arms and legs inside the tram car at all times. Long story short, I'm a water nerd. I am a classically educated marine biologist and environmental scientist. I have made a life studying biology, chemistry, microbiology, molecular biology. I was doing PCR before wastewater epidemiology became a thing. It's something that I've really enjoyed doing. I have a passion for water and for the science of clean water and taking dirty water and turning it into clean water. So just a quick rundown. Right after graduation, I was fortunate enough to be able to get this job here at RTM UA. It really helped kind of open my eyes to a lot of the real world scenarios. The true-to-life situations where I was learning about stuff in school and that was great. But in order for me to be able to really understand how are these concepts applied in real life? How are all of the cool chemistry things that I'm learning about, all the cool microbes that I'm learning about? Well, what are they doing out in the real world? It's great that I can see them in a Petri dish, that I can see them in a glass culture dish. But what role do they have to play? And that's kind of what this job has allowed me to do. It's given me that tangible hands-on understanding. So how does that jump to blockchain and supply chain management and looking at my passion, looking at water as a tradable thing and as something needing to be tracked? The actual story is kind of funny. I didn't start going down the blockchain rabbit hole until 2018. And you'll see on here 2018 Unleash Innovation Lab. So there's a United Nations program called Unleash Innovation Lab that every year they partner with several different organizations around the world. Every year they send a thousand students and young professionals. And at the time I was still a young professional to a various place. A thousand YPs from around the world all gather to tackle the sustainable development goals. And if you have no idea what those are, don't worry, I'm going to be going over them in just a moment. But basically it's looking at how to be a good human by the year 2030. So the professional water industry that I'm a part of sent me over there as part of the delegation to look at SDG6, which is water and sanitation. So first of all, just being with that many brilliant people from all around the world, from Africa, from all over Europe, from Australia, New Zealand, the Arab countries, it was absolutely amazing. Just that much brain power under one roof was pretty incredible. So I get over there. We start talking just kind of with our neighbors because none of us really know each other. But we know it's like, hey, we're a thousand nerds about all sorts of other cool stuff. What do you do? What do you do? Where are you from? So there's this big opening ceremony, dignitary, celebrities, really, really cool stuff. One of the speakers makes the joke at the time that I didn't realize what was going on that, oh, blockchain, blockchain, blockchain, it's going to cure all humanities ills too bad, nobody actually knows what it is. And everybody kind of around me starts giggling. And I'm like, okay, I have no idea what's going on. But sure. And I'm just kind of laughing at a FOMO, fear of missing out, because everybody else around me is laughing. So I'm going to start laughing too. So I didn't really know what they were talking about. I'm like, hi, I'm a biologist. I'm a water nerd. If you start asking me about what bacteria is doing something that I can answer that I get. But the thing about blockchain just whoosh right over my head. So over the course of Unleash, over the course of my next two weeks, and this was in Singapore, which is just absolutely one of my favorite places on the planet. I want to try and get back there someday. So it was a lot of technology available to us, a lot of very knowledgeable people who were well versed in a lot of this high tech stuff. So over the course of the two weeks over there, just through just random side shatter, I found out what blockchain was. And I was like, oh, okay, like I had heard of Bitcoin, I kind of knew what it was. It's like, oh, you know, digital currency to me, it was like that same level of the credit system from Star Wars. I was like, all right, you know, sure, whatever. But once I found out about the underlying technology to blockchain and smart contracts, and I heard about it for the first time in supply chain management, from a team that was working on a different SDG, looking at sustainability in textiles in fashion and fabric, I was like, oh, oh, that's cool. That's something I can get behind that has really, really good potential. You know, that's kind of where I jumped on the blockchain bandwagon, so to speak. That was my first venture down to that rabbit hole. And since then, it's been, you know, kind of toying this idea and rolling it around in my head, like, okay, you know, what if we started looking at water and wastewater treatment as a supply chain, similar to what a, you know, an organic cotton fabric would have to go through and look at that as something that can be tracked as something where water rights could be traded, where we would need to look at the finances associated with that, look at the tracking associated with that and the logistics for it. And so I kind of, you know, tucked that in the back of my head, went on with Unleash, came back to my utility, did a whole lot of other stuff. I'm an adjunct instructor. But also when I came back from Unleash, my utility was in crisis. So little FYI about wastewater treatment, we are pretty much dependent on those microbes that I had briefly mentioned earlier, you know, all of those bacteria, the protozoa, all of those microscopic things. Yeah, sure, we add chemicals to the water. We allow, you know, some physical manipulation of it for the large stuff to settle out and all of that. But the real stars of the show are the microbes. And if we get something that is toxic to those microbes, similar to exposure to water that's toxic to humans, if we get something in that's toxic to those microbes, they're done. And our treatment capability is also done, which means we are basically releasing not fully treated sewage to the environment, to the open water, which nobody likes to do. So unfortunately, when I came back from Unleash, we were in one of these times.  You know, my boss is like, here, do this, this, this, this, and just for, you know, putting out the fire. Once we put out the fire, which it took three months to recover from this one particularly bad discharge, we lost $100,000 in additional revenue, we totally burned our treatment capacity, we had to wrestle with the environmental regulators, and it was a mess. So I started thinking there has to be a better way of doing this. And that's when I kind of started putting those pieces together, you know, again, well, what if we started looking at water and wastewater as that supply? So decided, you know, after some brief conversation with some people in the water side of things, hey, is this possible? And after some brief conversations from my new Unleash friends, hey, is this possible? Both sides said it's never been done before, but we don't see why not. So I was like, okay, let's roll the dice and give it a shot. So in May of 2020, like I said, I founded IWS. In 2021, I was fabulously down the blockchain rabbit hole. And I was actually fortunate enough to be a selected as a participant in the Frankfurt School of Business and Finance to be a DLT talent or a distributed ledger program talent. It's a female focused boot camp style program in blockchain. So that kind of, you know, solidified my credentials, you could say, in the tech and the blockchain space. And most recently, I had also completed a program on the water side of things in facility leadership, which again, just helps me understand even more so how this type of technology can be plugged into the water space. So I mentioned some of those sustainable development goals. Basically, in September of 2015, the United Nations held the UN Sustainable Development Summit and came up with 17 goals for what the world can do better by the year 2030. Obviously, this was pre-pandemic. So, you know, things have certainly shifted since then. And unfortunately, we are even more so behind the eight ball than we were before. But you'll see the 17 goals, they interact with each other. You know, no poverty does not exist in a vacuum. Water and sanitation does not exist in a vacuum. So every goal has targets to it.  It's an actual mission. What can we do in order to make the world a better place? Unfortunately, in 2020, 25 percent of the global population lacked safe drinking water in their home. In 2020, 25 percent of people on this planet lacked drinking water readily available. We have billionaires in just about every country, and we do not have everybody with access to drinking water.  We had to teach people how to wash their hands for a reasonable amount of time. 30 percent of the world's population could not do that because they did not have soap and water. They weren't able to do things that we kind of take for granted. And on the sanitation side of things, roughly 50 percent of the global population lack safely managed sanitation. There are places where open defecation is still a problem. There are places where it's a full ghetto community, and there's a strip of what's basically a really run-down porta potty that nobody maintains, that is unsafe for girls and for women at night, and people stop using it. So if we aren't able to have safe sanitation, we aren't able to have safe drinking water, this is a human health crisis, an environmental health crisis, and a just world safety and environmental crisis. So each of the targets has a specific endpoint in mind. This way it's not just that idea of, oh, water and sanitation. It's like, no, let's break it down. Further, once we get beyond those targets, we can start to see that SDG-6, pardon the pun, flows through just about every other sustainable development goal that the UN came up with. It does not, again, exist in that vacuum. So having clean water and sanitation is definitely going to impact SDG-3, good health and well-being. Climate action is going to impact SDG-6. The idea of having clean water, clean land, that what happens, what runs off from these treatment utilities, and unfortunately when there are no treatment utilities, directly impact both SDG-14 and SDG-15. I mentioned earlier that the porta-potties in a lot of these developing urban ghettos are primarily dangerous for women. If we're able to get that level of sanitation higher and that quality of sanitation higher, we will reduce the inequality of women versus men's safety. Women primarily are the ones who, when it comes to fresh water, need to start their day going out and going to the neighborhood well to fetch water for the day. Well, if women and girls are doing that, then they're not able to be in school. They're not able to be at work. They're busy taking care of that basic need because it's not in their home. It's miles away and they need to go fetch it every single day. If we're able to reduce the inequality with that and bring water to their home, then we're increasing that possibility of quality education, SDG-4. All of them kind of intertwine. Water is life, literally. Humans are not able to survive under conditions of either too little water or too much water. It's the Goldilocks. We need to have just enough and then same thing for sanitation. If we don't have any sanitation at all, we'll be experiencing cholera epidemics. Imagine what would have happened if on top of COVID hitting all of these places, we also had a cholera epidemic hitting all these places because of the breakdown in sanitation. It's really important that we understand where the idea of water treatment really fits into everything. The idea of using blockchain and new technologies and looking at viewing water and sanitation through a different lens all boils down to smart water. Now, what do I mean by smart water? Not this. Smart water is basically looking at not only the treatment itself, but implementing digital solutions to enable those treatment utilities to improve infrastructure performance and move towards being triple bottom line sustainable. Good for the environment, good for the economy, and good for society. Kind of like any really beneficial supply chain management strategy. You want to be able to hit those marks. You want to be able to have it triple bottom line sustainable. We utility strive to do the best job we can every day because it's human and environmental health impacts if we don't, but we need to make sure to get that information. We need to make sure to make the best use of all of our digital resources. To me, smart water implies bringing together the people, the process, and that technology in order to optimize the treatment. And this is how blockchain and smart contracts fit into the industry. We are, as an industry, we're kind of in the stone age relative to supply chain management, relative to logistics, relative to even the oil and gas industry. Water and especially sanitation are kind of afterthoughts. We're out of sight, out of mind, but we're just starting to experiment with this new technology. It's just starting to come on board for us. And how do we do that? We are looking at industrial Internet of Things, which not every facility has the infrastructure for that the physical hardware for places are moving towards that. That's something that, again, we're behind the eight ball. We're getting there. Once we have that IOT infrastructure, we can start collecting big data sets. We can start deploying AI and machine learning. We can start looking at predictive analytics. Digital twins is something that I'm going to cover in a little bit that is really, really cool. My company is actually in order to implement our blockchain technology, we are utilizing digital twins as kind of like a sandbox, a safe space to be able to toy around with things because a utility runs 24-7, 365. If there is a hardware or a software breakdown somewhere in there, that's inexcusable.  On the lab bench, I can mess around and if something doesn't work, I can wipe it clean and start just start over. Within an actual utility, we don't have that capability. It's something that we really need to make sure that we have that sandbox to trial things, to demo things before messing around with the utility in situ or in that physical space that they take place in. And for me, data is only as good as the platform that it's housed on. So that's kind of where we're at a stopping point in the industry. We're still using, again, Stone Age technology. Unfortunately, we can't have a conversation about all the fun stuff without also discussing cybersecurity concerns. It's something that we've, as an industry, kind of been forced into. We weren't quite ready for it until February of last year where all of a sudden there was a hack on a water utility and we're like, wow, okay, we didn't think we were on anybody's radar. So we're learning. We're on a very steep learning curve, but we are learning. Just to get everybody on the same page for some phrasing that I'm going to be throwing out there, everybody on here pretty much knows what IT is, information technology, all of the hardware stuff. I'm going to also be focusing on OT or operational technology. That's the stuff that is physically at the facility that's controlling the process. So I mentioned, you know, looking at physical and chemical treatment. Well, that chemical dosing of the water needs to come from a physical change in the valves of a chemical storage tank. Well, that is traditionally done by someone going out there and manually turning a valve. Well, now as utilities are trying to get smarter, that's something that we're able to really toy around with and use software and hardware in concert to be able to adjust that for us. This way we don't have to have somebody out there. We're able to digitize that. Most utilities have digital OT at some level. SCADA, which is supervisory control and data acquisition software, is kind of the general repository for all of the data collected by the IOT devices. And PLCs or programmable logic controllers are the devices, the edge devices. They're the ones that are physically controlling that valve. You know, once they get triggered, that valve then opens. Unfortunately, in our industry, because smart stuff is still new to us, you know, we're all about preventative maintenance for IT. You know, we get updates from all of our software providers and all of our IT departments and everything. Oh, make sure you're watching out for this hack and that spam and everything else. But unfortunately, the OT is usually subject to just reactive maintenance. We don't really do anything until, oh, wow, we tried sending a signal for this to happen at this location in the plant and nothing happened. We don't know what to do. With the really cool IOT stuff, we're able to have additional capabilities that we never were before. We're able to have on the water side of things something like advanced metering infrastructure or AMI. Basically, that's able to, instead of having somebody go to your house, physically read a dial on the side of your house to know what your water bill would equate to, they're able to just kind of pass by, scan a little tag as they're driving past your house, and that information will be automatically uploaded back at their home base. We're able to do that through GIS. We're able to, on the wastewater side of things, look at the collection system. You know, I mentioned earlier that wastewater treatment utilities get a whole lot of stuff from various places.  All of that stuff comes to a utility like this. But in addition, we also have hospital waste that comes to us. So we have medical waste. You know, when COVID first hit, we had hospitals calling us asking what to do with the material that the COVID patients were excreting. And we're like, we don't know.  You tell us. And there was this disconnect. There's also industrial facilities. So chemical processing plants, garment processing, manufacturing facilities, stuff like that. All of those things that use water either to create some sort of liquid mixture or to cool things down, you know, nuclear facilities. Cooling down, you know, spent nuclear fuel rods. All of that stuff produces wastewater. And it comes to us. And all of those microbes that I said are the real stars of wastewater treatment rely on the quality of that incoming flow. So we're starting to be able to put out IOT sensors to be able to get an idea of what that quality is. This way, what happened to my facility when I was coming back from Unleash doesn't happen again. You know, we're able to get that kind of advance warning like, hey, really gnarly stuff is coming down, brace for impact and try and come up with a plan on what to do to recover. We're also able to deploy it in not only the treatment facility itself, but even just in the engineering and design space. I was talking about those digital twins, you know, a 3D rendering of your physical facility. Well, that wouldn't be possible without industrial Internet of Things in the laboratory. I'm able to automate some of the stuff here thanks to new cool tech. So we're starting to be able to implement a lot of this stuff. There we go. We are unfortunately, though, drowning in data. And yet at the same time, it's everywhere and we can't use it. So everybody's heard the phrase, water, water, everywhere, nor a drop to drink. That's kind of where the water and wastewater industry is now. We have all this data coming in from all of those sources that I just recognized, but we don't know what to do with it. It's raw data. It's giant data sets that we're looking like, okay, this is great, but what does it mean? IOT devices generate a sea of data, but it's the information that we really need. It's currently not being used to its maximum potential because going from a lot of data to usable information requires a middle step. And we haven't quite perfected that middle step yet. We need context. We need processing. All right. So the start of that context and processing is in data mining, finding patterns, employing statistics, AI, machine learning, deep learning is where things get a little scary, but that's kind of where the technology is leading us. But it's all about finding patterns and correlations within those large data sets being generated. So right now, as a whole, the industry is still getting comfortable with AI in general. You start talking about machine learning or even deep learning and people's eyes not only glaze over, but they physically tense up. You can see everybody start to clench when you start talking about utilizing machine learning for stuff. Now, with artificial intelligence, it's giving us the capability for a computer system to perform tasks. Let's be honest. If Push came to serve, a trained monkey could do my job in the laboratory.  And trying to digitize that, trying to digitize that manual valve opening and closing is something that we're moving to as an industry because in order to make something truly triple bottom line sustainable, we can't be subject to shutdowns. We can't be subject to cybersecurity attacks. We can't be subject to what happened down in Texas last year where they experienced a cold snap. So all of their water pipes froze. They didn't plan on anything ever getting that cold. All of a sudden, there were thousands of people in Texas who had zero access to clean water. So we can't be in that situation anymore. As we move towards sustainable cities, as we move towards truly sustainable development for everybody, that's no longer going to be an option. So we need to start looking at AI. We need to start looking at machine learning. We need to eventually start looking at deep learning no matter how scary it is. And the only way we can do that is if we implement it correctly, if we implement it safely. Again, this is human health and environmental health. We cannot afford to be just willy-nilly throwing it around and saying, hey, let's see what happens. It has to be done smartly. Because otherwise, as I'm sure looms large over all aspects of the tech industry, if it's not done smartly, we could run the risk of ending up in a post-apocalyptic sci-fi movie. It's one of those things where we need to bring in, again, people, process, and the technology. We can't just create technology and then jam it down utilities' throats. This needs to be created organically. This needs to be something where all of the relevant stakeholders have a voice and saying, yeah, we want to do this, but we want to make sure not to do this poorly. We want to make sure that it includes all of these factors that maybe haven't been thought of yet. It's really crucial in something like supply chain management and even trade finance for a little bit. You can remove the human element to a certain extent and still pretty much be okay. There's still going to be the need for some individuals for some human involvement, but on the whole, you can automate things from beginning to end and it fully streamlines everything. It fully digitizes everything. Water and wastewater in particular, it's a little bit more of a finesse. That's why I said people, process, and technology. It needs to be something that includes all of the factors because there are so many moving parts and there are so many subtleties to water and wastewater treatment. How do we try and get around some of those subtleties? How do we try to make sure that all of that toe dipping and in trying to really experiment with this new technology doesn't blow up in our faces? Well, we're starting small. Utilizing machine learning and utility specific data sets to do some predictive analytics to be like, okay, well, it's a giant if then statement for modeling. If we do this, then we think this will happen. Well, let's find out. Engineers and mathematicians love their models, but models are only as good as the information used to come up with that model equation and to come up with that idea to begin with. Garbage in, garbage out is the standard phrase for any environmental engineer learning to try and go into something like this. But for us, it's another decision-making tool. It's something where we can start to work with that data. It can give us that information. I mentioned digital tools before. This is what it represents. The gray, boring looking thing is the physical facility. Again, this is something that while it's new in water and wastewater, because we're behind that APOL, it's very much so deployed in manufacturing. It's very much so deployed in the gas electric space. Nuclear facilities like digital twins have been around for a little while. But for us, it's like, oh, shiny. But we're starting to get an understanding of what we can do. I think it's absolutely super cool. I can't wait to dig into this more as it becomes more mainstream and more well-known. It's a 3D digital sandbox to play around with what if scenarios. Because, again, utilities do not want to be taken offline for any reason. If there's any sort of problem, they want to screw around with stuff in the background. This way, if that eventuality would ever happen, they already have a plan decided on what to do to respond to that. A lot of it is corresponding around climate resiliency, so SDG 13. It's one of those things where, again, it's a tool to be able to get smart cities and smart communities and smart utilities up to those sustainable development goals. I mentioned that the data is only as good as the platform that it lives on. We can all appreciate that being from a blockchain background. That's what it's all about. It's data management. We're not in a data creation space. We're in a data management space. For us in the water industry, it needs to be accessible. We found that out during COVID when a lot of upper-level managers were sent home because they weren't needed at these facilities. But we still need to run these facilities 24, 7, 365. I have been coming into work every day since COVID happened. There was no stop. We can't do this from home as much fun as it would be to have a laboratory in my basement. It's one of those things where we needed to have the information accessible to upper-level management who were working remotely and some still are. It needs to be integrable, which I've never wondered or I've always wondered how the proper phrasing of it. Apologies if that came out wrong. Basically, something that is easily integrated with the existing technology. A lot of utilities, especially here in the United States, didn't pop up until the 60s and the 70s back when the Clean Water Act first came around. There was a whole mess of utilities that were suddenly in existence. There was this boom in water and sanitation treatment. All of these utilities popped up and they didn't have smart water in mind for 60 years down the line. So all of the smart tech that we're starting to employ needs to be able to be easily integrated with the existing and let's be honest, really old physical infrastructure that a lot of utilities are still working with. Water and wastewater operators are a very visual breed. We need to kind of, as people are making their rounds around the facility, just kind of go glancing at a computer screen that we're walking past and keep on going with our rounds. We have a lot of space to cover during our shift and we need to make sure that everything is running the way it should be. We need red light bad, green light good. We need that easy interface and that very visual data understanding. I'm kind of ashamed to say this, especially for this crowd, but most utilities here still use on-site server rooms. It's not something I'm proud of, but it's something that that's how we've done it. That's how the idea of, well, where do we house the data? Right here. We'll put it over in that corner. We'll lock everything up and it'll be as secure as possible and that's kind of how things have been. That's the status quo. And to COVID, we need remote access. We need a way to back up that information just in case something were to happen. Some place does lose power. As we start to morph and slowly bring people on board to utilizing things like cloud computing, that's when we can really start to utilize the additional tech. We're able to really start to go to having that remote access and what part of what my company is working on the Holy Grail, not only remote access to looking at the data, but being able to use a revised version of SCADA that's housed on a distributed ledger technology platform interacting with those PLCs at the utility to be able to control that utility while keeping cybersecurity in mind. So unfortunately, I mentioned on-site servers. This is also the kind of standard proprietary dashboard that most sensor vendors within the water and wastewater industry will sell you. If you buy their sensor, you also have to sign up for their proprietary information dashboard, which I absolutely hate proprietary dashboards, but it's the current industry standard because this is that visual, easy graphic representation and we can see trend analysis. We can see green and red. We can see all of this information that these sensors are collecting on a screen. What I propose doing is being able to change from a proprietary dashboard that basically only the utility and the sensor vendor company can see the information on and altering that to a distributed ledger. That's where blockchain and smart contracts come in. That will give us that data accessibility, transparency and immutability that we need, that will also allow utilities to maintain the ownership of their data, which is very big in the utility space. Nobody wants to put that information out there and then all of a sudden whatever vendor company they're giving that information to can go sell that information to another company or can sell that information to a journalist or it's very, very not only cybersecurity oriented but also data ownership oriented and data privacy oriented. That's one of the things that really struck me about hyper ledger and hyper ledger fabric in general is that ability to have this permissioned multi-channel capability within the blockchain so that every utility can only see their individual data. The more utilities that are brought on board increases the overall cybersecurity of the platform but you're not having a utility out there where another utility can see their information that maybe they don't really want the other utility to see and then incorporating smart contracts on top of that. Again, one of the things I really like about hyper ledger fabric is that capability and the actual consensus mechanism and the smart contract language that they're able to deploy. With all of this really cool technology there's still a lot of barriers unfortunately. Again, we as an industry move at half the speed of smell. We're very slow to change but human health and environmental health so there's a reason behind it but there's people like me that are out there like yes we need to start looking outside the box. We need to start looking at other sectors, other industries and maybe kind of borrowing some of their technology to be able to improve our own industry. Cost, expertise, the understanding and reliability of the technology. Sensors, I'm sure in supply chain management every once in a while you'll get a sensor picking up a number and you're like huh is that really correct or is that just you know that sensor now needs to be calibrated? Well those same conversations are happening at utilities. Is that sensor really reading that number or does it just need a recalibration? I also mentioned before the idea of now that's how we've always done it. Well things here are fine. Unfortunately things are no longer fine so utilities are kind of being forced into this new venture because of the security risk and to the data access and also what to do with that data access once a malicious attacker starts using that in-road to start remotely controlling the OT for their ends and that's kind of again where the cybersecurity and the blockchain technologies really go well together in that we're able to utilize blockchain and smart contracts inherent you know 51% attack and and being able to to have smart contracts remotely control and remotely trigger those PLCs to do the work for us that will reduce the cybersecurity risk of a nefarious agent coming in and screwing around with our SCADA programming which unfortunately is exactly what happens down in Florida in in February of 2021. This is where the water industry was like oh shit pardon my language we did not realize we were on anybody's radar as an industry we were like oh yeah nuclear facilities they need to be worried about that oil and gas facilities they need to worry about that manufacturing chemical processing we're like who's going to screw around with a water and wastewater treatment plant until they did so we are very much so trying to create a new culture of cybersecurity awareness so what happened in February was that a known person got in through a remote access software because it was during the pandemic people were working from home so all of those upper level managers were using team viewer you know desktop sharing to be able to get into their their facility programming well unfortunately there was a malicious attacker who was also using that same team viewer to be able to get into the facility programming this was deemed possible because all the computers that the personnel at the facility were using were connected to that SCADA programming that that central repository of the the iot data all of the computers were connected to the internet without firewall protection and all of the computers shared the same password this is the level of cybersecurity awareness that wait water and wastewater utilities were at up until february of 2021 remember i said stone age same password no firewall protection yeah let's have everybody have access to everything not the greatest idea because people are the weakest link in the cyber security chain we know this the the benefits of utilizing that blockchain data management platform connected to a a smart contract digital communication strategy instead of just on-site server connected to a SCADA that somebody has to use team viewer to access is only one of the the benefits to bringing in blockchain smart contracts there's a company out there called civic ledger they're they're out of australia the the founder and ceo's name is katrina donagy she's absolutely amazing and she is utilizing blockchain to track water rights so again going back to sustainable development if you're planning on building something out you know building out a community well you need to make sure you have enough water flow to be able to support that community we have enough water scarcity as it is we don't need to add any more so if we add additional population well who who owns the water that used to be sent to this area that is now being sent to this area and this area who has that water rights and in in both developing nations around the world as well as even here in the united states water rights are a huge thing and there's a lot of documentation there's a lot of uncertainty there's a lot of mistrust so civic ledger is using blockchain to be able to track those water rights i believe that it can also be used in things like tracking leak detection tracking led service lines what my company is doing for it is utilizing it for a contaminant tracking i mentioned those industrial users sending us stuff and completely wiping out our microbes we can put this information on a distributed ledger remote utility control i mentioned that that idea of communicating directly with the plcs through smart contracts so what happened briefly because i know i've been yammering on for a while what happened when my utility was was totally knocked offline when i came back from unleash is that we had gotten a toxic slug from an industrial user we had no warning so we had guys out there popping manhole covers and backtracking through the entire collection system by the time we got to where we think the discharge was coming from it stopped conveniently and unfortunately you know when we went knocking on the the door of the industrial user it's like hey so you guys sent us some pretty gnarly stuff they're like no no we didn't and even if we did there's nothing you can do about it it sucked but they weren't wrong because there was no single point of truth to what we were saying versus what they were saying so my idea that you know again rolling things around in my head just coming back from unleash was to create that single point of truth by utilizing i iot having the information stored you know on the cloud having it in a blockchain this way the industrial user had access to that information the utility had access to that information the reg the environmental regulating authority had access to the information any any deemed stakeholder could have access to that information at the same time we could deploy smart contracts to be able to faster and more efficiently get those responses from the utility from what they needed to do we could use it for billing purposes where we had automatic financial transactions occurring instead of just waiting months and months for the data to be turned into billing forms and then have the bill sent to the industrial user only for them to say no we're not paying that because we don't believe it was us who sent that additional discharge so if we get all the information out there we digitize the information coming in we can digitize the information going out and start to really streamline utility responses to make it so that we're not discharging untreated sewage to the the open water you know we discharge to a river we don't want to pollute that river because that river is somebody else's drinking source we want to make sure that that information and and that physical treatment happens because environmental sustainability human social sustainability we don't want this surrounding community to be angry with us they use that water and also financial sustainability we want to make sure that we're not spending extra money on treatment chemicals we want to make sure we're not spending extra on regulatory fines what we're also looking at is they said that remote utility control right now there's that lovely picture of a valve that everybody out of wastewater and water utility has been like yep that's a valve that's a number write that down on the little sheet and then they go on with their day in order to bypass all of that we have the capability and this is something that i'm currently still waiting to hear back from the national science foundation as to whether they think it's a good idea that they will fund the r&d to create this is creating that blockchain-based SCADA platform so that we're distributing the information and we're utilizing smart contracts to communicate with the plcs and we're utilizing and taking advantage of the cyber security benefits that that would inherently guarantee us so that we don't end up shooting ourselves in the foot if a nefarious actor were to come around or in case of another global pandemic we lose half of our workforce so now that i've kind of made everybody's brains explode the last thing i want to leave you with is what has become almost my personal mantra since really getting sucked down this this tech and blockchain rabbit hole the most dangerous phrase in the language is we've always done it this way let's not always do it this way and that's me awesome jennifer that was inspiring this bitch i love it thank you hopefully i did for everybody i'm not a award freak as for your definition but definitely i do love topics that you touched being so much interesting what's going on in specific areas such as africa so it was an inspiring one for me i'll loot into the tenants to make questions to you though we have very little time left i didn't hear anybody pipe up during specific slides so hopefully i didn't miss anybody i know it was a lot of information in a very short amount of time andria there's a couple of comments in the chat about getting the recordings maybe we want to remind folks that yes we will send out the recording to the event or we'll post that on the on the wiki site correct it's on the wiki site and also on the linkin inside so it's going to be posted tomorrow's latest the day after tomorrow but in a very few days you're going to have it on our linkin inside so i'll make it available for anybody but join amazing to to access it and to enjoy it awesome and we'll be able to reach out to you jennifer uh for any questions i'm guessing yeah definitely um feel free to shoot me an email connect with me on linkedin um or just you know for anybody out there um you know both andrea and and eric have my email information so they can pass something along um they i i try not to harass them too much but uh if if there's anything that you guys have a question about by all means go for it i actually do have a question jennifer it's a very important question as well um you you'd reference two different sci-fi movies in your uh in your discussion today one is skynet and the other one is star wars i would have to ask you which one you are partial to because that will define our future relationship ah well i'm gonna throw a wrench in that thank you for giving the right answer jennifer you know what i think it's not like that beat man over there from canada take care seriously jennifer i'm just saying pick wisely so how about this for a response i am of the mindset of Jurassic Park when um when the the scientist says it's not we can we can or we could we could we could we were so busy focusing on what we could do that we didn't stop to consider what we should do so it's very political and important so thank you very much but but it's true because it factors into the the the terminator thing where if we don't look at what we should do we'll end up just letting technology run away with itself and it needs to be that people process and technology in terms of life lessons i'm gonna go star wars i'm a fan of the star wars galaxy sorry good good good oh my god i didn't even notice that that's awesome i'm not in wrong answer definitely wrong answer this is so you prefer the rise of the machines yeah definitely so i love arnie she i'm a big fan you're talking to a guy that was born at the beginning of the 70s so you cannot tell me that you go for the beat man from canada i'm disappointed but seriously Jennifer that was a great pitch i loved it literally so i can only thank you for being with us let's keep the conversation on going sorry for the noises in the background but my kids are at home at this time of the day and they are noisy as you can imagine so once again the recording will be made available shortly after the call we see tomorrow maybe and i'll make it available for anybody who's joined us i'll go post it on our linked inside the slides that you saw today Jennifer thanks again it was really great speech and let's keep the conversation on going and we're going to to join forces again in two weeks time i hope to see you all thanks everybody bye everyone bye