MSIT Theses and Dissertations (2019)

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Travel destinations and route prediction tool: case of dynamic and personalized ecosystem
(Strathmore University, 2019) Kiragu, Phillis Wacera
Travelling is part of every individual’s life today. Travelling has become part of people’s life goals. These travels range from short vacations to yearlong round the world trips. There are many reasons why people travel, most of which fall in the broader categories of either business or leisure. People have been travelling for ages and each day attempt to come up with better ways of planning. However, there are many issues that come up when travelling or planning to travel to new places. One of the major issues is not knowing which destinations fits them best and the most optimal route to use. As such most people end up going to popular destinations that are traditionally known. Most systems today are very good at guiding the user on what to do when they get to a certain destination but they do little in identifying the destinations in the first place. This study proposes a natural language processing model that takes in a user’s preferences in terms of factors such a budget and weather and returns a list of predicted destinations for that user. Natural Language Processing is carried out by training a neural network model that detects similarities based on word vectors. The end result is a prediction of destinations suitable for a user based on their personal preferences.
Mobile application to assist cancer patients access healthcare and funding in Kenya
(Strathmore University, 2019) Chepchirchir, Serem Mercy
Cancer has posed to be a killer disease over time. Most patients die of cancer due to lack of access to early screening and effective treatment and lack of medical funds. Cancer treatment is deemed expensive thus most patients would need a health insurance fund or donor to offset the hospital bill. Cancer patients also need information on where they can access quality health service. There are several stakeholders who have joined forces to overcome the cancer burden. The government of Kenya has spearheaded the initiative by introduction of NHIF cover, covering cancer treatment. Cancer patients can be treated at NHIF approved hospitals using the capped cover amount. There are also Non-governmental organizations and cancer fund drives that have been organized to assist in the cancer burden in Kenya. Data was collected using questionnaires, the data collected was used to find out the challenges faced when accessing health care and funding. Data was analyzed using Google analytics tools and results obtained were used to guide the researcher in the design of the mobile and web application. Agile software methodology was used to develop the application. A mobile and web application was developed to assist cancer patients to access health care and funding. Users of the system are required to register their details that consist of their bio data as well as their NHIF number. The details of the user are sent to the donor to assist in paying the monthly contribution as well as the deficit amount to cover the full cancer treatment. Users are also referred to an oncologist and Hospital facility upon appointment request.
A Vision-based approach to fall detection for elderly patients receiving home-based care
(Strathmore University, 2019) Waruguru, Andrew Kinyua
Falls present one of the unintentional accidents for people in the world. The adverse effects of a fall vary with the nature of the fall and the impact with the ground or object. Essentially, falls rarely occur in the daily activities of healthy individuals. The occurrence results in fatal or non-fatal falls. However, the falls are consequential for the elderly people since they result in future related problems or death. As such, elderly patients require additional attention in the case of fall events. Therefore, to mitigate the effect of a fall on an elderly patient, there must be the provision of a fast response mechanism. Response time to medical emergencies plays a key role in patient survival and recovery. As such, medical personnel strive to reduce the response time. Proper and immediate notification of an emergency aids in reducing the response time. In order to substantially reduce the negative effect of the fall or increase the survival chances, patients ought to receive fast medical response. Therefore, the need of a fast and proper notification method that aims at providing relevant information in regards to the nature of emergency of the patient. As such, proper monitoring leads to a reduced response time. Arguably, elderly patients require urgent medical care in case of a fall. This research work proposes a multi-person fall detection system, which implements a vision-based approach for fall detection leveraging on region-based convolution neural network. A fixed camera serves as the input device to capture images of people. The system analyses the image to identify the posture and orientation of the people present in the image. Based on the provided image, the system then classifies the occurrence as a fall or non-fall using the developed model. If it identifies a fall, an alert is then sent to a concerned party. The system achieves a mean average precision of 0.8 in fall detection. Further, the system detects a fall in an image in 3.8 seconds thus improving the response time of the medical personnel to aid in curbing the negative effects of a fall on a patient.
A System to detect suspicious activities in network traffic
(Strathmore University, 2019) Gesare, Roselyne Magangi
Modern enterprise networks have become targets of attacks from Internet malware including worms, self-propagating bots, spamming bots, client-side infects (drive-by downloads) and phishing attacks. The results of a cyber-attack which include loss of company information, theft of money, costs of repairing the affected systems and perhaps damage to the reputation of the organization, can be devastating. However, with the right tools, security can dissect suspicious traffic to detect these attacks. When a company institutes a good method of network security surveillance, security analysts could be alerted within minutes of problems occurring in good time. It is with this aim that this study sought to research and develop a simple and robust system that could be used to detect suspicious activities in network traffic. Specifically, the study sought to; Discuss and analyze suspicious activities in network traffic and devices; analyze the existing techniques used to detect suspicious activities in network traffic; develop a system for detecting suspicious activities in a network traffic; and validate the proposed system. The study adopted an experimental design. The experiment was conducted on an Ubuntu machine running 16.04 LTS where Snort was installed alongside PulledPork, Barnyard2 and BASE to act as the Web GUI. ICMP large packets were sent to the network for detection and the system was able to detect, analyze and report them on the BASE GUI. The target population for this study was network traffic. The researcher generated the network traffic through sending data packets across the networks. The network traffic was analyzed by using the network security tools analyzed by the researcher and chosen based on their availability and compatibility with one another to come with the desired setup. This research was not aimed at reinventing the wheel but offering major improvement through precise feedback on what network administrators across different organizations could identify as suspicious activities in their networks
A Tool for tracking land transactional activities: case of land registry in Kenya
(Strathmore University, 2019) Muriuki, Reginah Wairimu
Land transactions contribute significantly to the economic activity, growth and development of a country. With a steady increase in population and devolution of land registries in Kenya, land transactions take place all over the country and on a daily basis. Efficient and effective land transactions are therefore crucial. The current land structure is highly paper based and marred with many land Agents. The storage of these land transactions is mostly paper based which is susceptible to change or physical damage. On the other hand, the digitized records are accessible to a few and lacks transparency and security. To access the digitized records takes days which questions how well the system works and how efficient it is even with smaller tasks as search. This Thesis looks to analyze the land transactional activities in the land registry in Kenya and also to review the land transactional activities tracking tools that are used in the land registry system. The scope of this thesis is based on the development of a technological and information based tool that would facilitate the tracking, recording, storage and retrieval of land transaction activities over time. The tool employs the use of Blockchain technology to guarantee immutability, transparency and data integrity. The solution implementation of the research is based on transparency and ease of transactions, hence, protection of the buyer, seller and owner of the land from fraud.
A Real time electricity usage monitoring system using smart meters for wastage detection in Kenya
(Strathmore University, 2019) Obonyo, Joseph Oduor
Electricity utilities face dual challenges of generation and distribution. While many utilities are now migrating their operations into modern digitized platforms, most of these utilities have had to rely on old systems to carry out and monitor their commercial activities such as connectivity activity, itinerary scheduling, meter and device management, cycle billing, collections management and management reporting. This is causing utilities to reimagine customer engagements with a focus on feedback, put in place loss detection systems in their grids, use predictive models to schedule maintenance and other asset-management activities, equipping field workers with mobile devices that let them access technical instructions while in the field and deploy customized systems to help manage the extending networks. The main focus of this study was to design a real time electricity usage detection system using smart meters in Kenya, a system that would aid utility companies in providing real time feedback for service provision and anomaly detection. This research was done using smart meters to remotely record usage and record those messages manually into a web based portal. While it was not possible to replace existing old meters with the smart meters, the study made use of a test kit to simulate power consumption and usage recording. This study has put in place a model system that can be remotely connected to a smart meter and feedback generated in real time
An Algorithm for inferring consumer-to-consumer trust on twitter
(Strathmore University, 2019) Loyatum, Dennis
Trust amongst users engaged in consumer-to-consumer (C2C) e-commerce on Twitter as well as other social media platforms has been on the decline. The cost effective manner and timely delivery of C2C content makes it possible to reach a wider consumer base across the globe. However, this is under threat partly because of the risk of being scammed by other consumers on these platforms and the uncertainty related to this kind of e-commerce. Social media platforms such as Twitter are experiencing a decline in active user partly because of misuse of their platform. Twitter features can be used to build a consumer-to-consumer trust inference algorithm that can be relied upon by consumers in determining who to engage with in C2C e-commerce for specific contexts having not interacted directly with the seller/buyer in the physical world. There is a need by consumers to know whom they can trust on important C2C e-commerce transactions to limit their exposure to scams and fraudulent users on Twitter. This research sought to develop an algorithm to infer the trust score of a user engaged in consumer-to-consumer e-commerce using features present on his/her user profile. The algorithm utilized machine learning techniques. The algorithm provides consumers with a sense of trust in C2C engagements on Twitter. The research employed an experimental approach that involved the development of an algorithm and its validation. Wrapper approach was adopted for feature selection using data mined using Twitter Search API using C2C keyword-hashtag (#). Multi-class classification was successfully applied to infer a consumers trust score. Potential users can then use the proposed algorithm to check and choose trusted consumers on Twitter for different transactions.
A Mixed Integer Programming optimization model for scheduling blood donors in disaster & emergency response: a case study of Nairobi region
(Strathmore University, 2019) Githogori, Samuel Maina
In recent years, Kenya has experienced tragedies ranging from natural disasters such as floods, terrorist activities such as the Westgate and Garissa University attacks, man-made tragedies such as road accidents and collapsed building, as well as tragedies resulting from reckless human behavior, such as fuel siphoning, and building next to power lines. When such kinds of disasters and tragedies occur, they have historically caused serious injuries that sometimes cause death. Also, during such events, medical emergencies arise, blood is one of the most critical components required by medial responder, and health facilities in order to perform transfusions that are necessary to save the lives of individuals. In the past, nationwide blood appeals have been conducted by authorities such as the Kenya Red Cross Society, media houses, politicians, and ordinary citizens, and Kenyans of Goodwill respond in large number at blood donation centers to donate blood. The challenge arising is that the system of appealing for blood is informal, unstructured and fragmented. It is difficult to track the effectiveness of ad-hoc methods of appealing for blood, and hard for potential blood donors to determine their eligibility in case they need to assist. The study proposed a mixed integer programming (MIP) model to optimize decision variables, which would determine the most optimal donation schedule and location for a given donor, based on whether they are eligible to donate, or not. The model sought to reduce the cost of responds, which is a function of the probability that a request for blood appeal will be posted, and the number of trips, distance, and cost it takes donor to respond. The model incorporated constraints such as donor availability within a given time block, and donor willingness to respond in a given region. The model’s outcome suggested that increased donor flexibility leads to a decrease in cost per donation session, and an increase in available regions increases donor flexibility, hence lower cost per donation intervention session on the donor.
Sentiment analysis for TV show popularity prediction: case of Nation Media Group’s NTV
(Strathmore University, 2019) Mutisya, Joshua Mutinda
Media-houses play a vital role in informing the masses on the issues that matter. They are also a source of entertainment for many households. In Kenya, the public depends on media largely for entertainment and educational purposes. However, many media-houses find it difficult to make decisions on what the viewers actually wish to watch. This makes the media-houses to be in the dark, unaware of what viewers want and making decisions based on perceptions rather than data. Most of the analytic tools used by media-houses in Kenya are used to provide insights on website-related activities such as site visits, number of article reads and read-depths. This is not a good way of measuring popularity and does not create a true reflection of how an audience perceives a given product. In this study, we propose a predictive model that uses sentiment analysis to determine the popularity of a given TV show. This enables accurate decisions to be made based on the viewership trends over a specific period of time. Natural Language Processing is used to perform sentiment analysis on tweets derived from Twitter. This solution involved tweets being derived from the social site Twitter through the use of the Twitter API. Once fetched, the tweets had their polarity measured through the use of a lexicon dictionary in order to remove neutral tweets. These tweets were then be labelled as either positive or negative using the Support Vector Machine classifier. Then the overall popularity score of a movie was calculated. The solution was able to not only show the polarity of derived tweets, but also assign overall popularity scores showing how positive or negative a TV show is.
A Blockchain approach for detecting counterfeit academic certificates in Kenya
(Strathmore University, 2019) Otuya, Joy Atuwo
There has been an increase in the number of people seeking to pursue higher education and secure employment in different sectors across Kenya and the world at large. Consequently, there has been an exponential increase in the number of fake academic certificates being issued. Employers end up higher less qualified staff, while education institutions admit students with lesser qualifications. This has had a negative impact on education institutions in as far as credibility is concerned and for the employers, low productivity from the under qualified staff. Several methods have been put in place by different organizations for purposes of verifying academic certificates in Kenya. However, most of the methods employed are manual processes which are time consuming, tiresome and more prone to errors. The automated processes currently in use still have loopholes that can easily be exploited to bypass the verification process. For this reason, there is need to come up with an automated solution that will ensure proper verification of academic certificates thereby upholding the credibility of our academic institutions and increasing productivity in other organizations. This research explores different strategies employed in Kenya together with their challenges, the traditional and automated systems available for verification of academic certificates and finally proposed the development of a blockchain capable application for purposes of verifying academic certificates.
A Mobile application to track pension payments: a case for pensions department in Kenya
(Strathmore University, 2019) Odongo, Arthur
According to the existing terms and conditions of service especially for the permanent and pensionable officers in public service in Kenya, officers expect terminal benefits as an incentive for the services they rendered to the country for a number of years of their working life. These terminal benefits are referred to as pension in this study, which is simply the amount set aside either by employer, employee or both to ensure that at retirement there is something for employees to fall back on as an income so that they are not stranded financially. All public service retirees or pensioners are aware that they as entitled to some pension benefits. However, most pensioners do not know what their benefits are as well as not knowing how to access the benefits due to lack reliable, effective and efficient methods of interaction between them and the Pensions Department. This leads to suffering and hardship of pensioners and their dependents and beneficiaries of deceased public servants associated with delay in the processing and payment of pension. Current methods used for interacting with pensioners are through the media, sending letters or pensioners visiting the Pensions Department in Nairobi. These methods are costly, inefficient and unreliable. These challenges and weaknesses necessitated to the development a mobile application exclusively for the civil service pensioners whose pension is disbursed through the Pensions Department. The application helps pensioners interact directly with the Pensions Department by tracking their pension payments through an interactive menu based Unstructured Supplementary Service Data application that provides feedback and notifications through a Short Message Service. The study used V- shaped software development model to design, develop and test the application. The application was tested to show that pensioners can interact directly with the Department and access pension services using a mobile phone. Findings from usability testing illustrated that pensioners appreciated that the application was simple to use, provided clear feedback and instructions as well as being easy to learn, even for the first time. Overall, they were satisfied using the application and agreed to recommend it to other pensioners. Feedback from the respondents testing the application showed they liked the idea that such a digital tool could be accessed using any mobile phone without Internet connectivity or the need to download it. The application helped them familiarise themselves with the pensions processes by providing them with feedback or alerts as they tracked their payments till the payment stage. The study concluded by recommending the adoption of the application by the Pensions Department in Kenya and in other African countries with such public pension schemes.
Real-time monitoring system for drunk driver through Internet of Things - a case of Nairobi County, Kenya
(Strathmore University, 2019) Mbugua, Joseph Muoho
One of the major causes of traffic accidents and crashes globally is drunk driving. Though driving under influence of alcohol is illegal, drivers still find themselves doing it. This has resulted to deaths and fatalities which affect the economy negatively. Currently, different technologies have been adopted to reduce the vice without success. In Kenya, breathalyzers are being used by traffic police to monitor drunk drivers. This technology has failed due to corruption. The reason being the culprits are able to buy their way out. Technological innovation needs to be implemented in a cost effective, efficient and legal manner. This enables to combat drunken driving on the roads easily. The researcher applies the V-Model Methodology to design, implement and test of a realtime monitoring system for drunk driver through IoT. The system uses fuzzy logic based algorithm to analyze the response of MQ-3 and MQ-135 sensors. Sensor fusion is achieved through processing the analog to digital converted values of the sensor output using an algorithm to determine alcohol concentration in the breath (BAC). The analyzed result determines whether the Blood alcohol concentration (BAC) is within the legally permissible standards. Upon the detection of such a situation, an alarm is activated. Additionally, an ‘alert SMS’ indicating the drunk driver’s location as tracked by the GPS receiver on the same system and the vehicle registration number is communicated to the SACCO managers using GSM cellular network to take appropriate action of intercepting the vehicle. The tested real-time results indicated the successful implementation of the system.
A Wireless M-Bus based smart water meter model: a case of Nairobi City Water & Sewerage Company
(Strathmore University, 2019) Kinuthia, Ephraim Mwangi
Water in the many aspects of our lives is used, and therefore it is very critical to humanity’s survival. Unfortunately, in Kenya, water industry has been facing myriad meter reading challenges. Notably, as the population of the meters increase, companies have employed more staff to read meters manually. These has subsequently triggered a blotted work force hence increased operational costs. Security and privacy concerns arise due to the frequency of water company’s staffs visiting the customer’s premises to perform various duties. Customer complaints relating to wrong billing that are occasioned by erroneous meter reads and wrong meter matching consequently leading to misstated bills to the customers, have been on the rise. It is also not possible in almost all households to estimate the quantity of water in the storage without manually checking the water tank level. On the other hand, various phone-based applications in the water that are developed are not able to eradicate fully the challenges experienced in the water sector. This paper adopts applied research methodology to provide a practical solution to the challenges affecting meter reading in the water companies using the Wireless M-Bus technology. The study delivers a wireless meter-bus smart water meter model integrated with other smart metering devices to enable remote meter reading. It further discusses technologies used in the smart water meters, various smart meter implementations and the driving factors to adopting smart metering while exploring the advantages with smart meters over the mechanical meters and their economic value.
A Mobile health application for patient monitoring in maternal healthcare
(Strathmore University, 2019) Chege, Ian Antony
With the recent global uptake of mobile devices and mobile connectivity services, a new avenue for the dispatch of health information services to patients by health facilities has emerged. Mobile health applications complementing patient monitoring systems have enabled access to health care services by patients whereby medical practitioners are able to monitor their patients remotely and therefore provide healthcare information either in real time or intermittently through the use of mobile devices. Of particular importance is the field of maternal health care, which has received a major boost by virtue of mobile penetration. This has brought about uptake of patient services and the receptiveness towards mobile capabilities for the patients to their respective health facilities. In Kenya, a majority of the number of women do not receive the recommended four or more required antenatal care visits. A contributing factor towards these low figures is that a number of these women live in abject poverty. In order to combat these low figures, monitoring of patients by doctors and community health workers through use of mobile applications will go a long way in increasing health care services to expectant mothers. This application area focuses on a mobile health application for gathering of patient data and dissemination of stage-based maternal health information to the patients’ mobile devices. The application also provides timely antenatal care tips as well as allowing the user to set reminders on upcoming appointments and expected antenatal care visits. The application also allows for two-way interactive text messaging between the expectant mother and the health worker. Testing and implementation of the application yielded 60% acceptability and user satisfaction from the respondents, with users determining the accuracy and responsiveness of the application at 62%. From the testing results provided by the respondents, the application can be deemed as usable and viable for implementation. In conclusion, the application was deemed acceptable by the respondents, who found the two-way interactive messaging functionality unique.
Rogue access point detection framework on a multivendor access point WLAN
(Strathmore University, 2019) Barasa, Kunjira Fredrick
Wireless internet access has become common throughout the world. IEEE 802.11 Wireless fidelity (Wi-Fi) is now a common internet access standard almost becoming a requirement in homes, offices, universities and public places due to developments in Bring-Your-Own-Device (BYOD), mobile telephony and telecommuting. With the proliferation of Wi-Fi comes a number of information security challenges that have to be addressed. One of the major security threats that comes with Wi-Fi is the presence of rogue access points (APs) on the network. Unsuspecting employees in a company or attackers can introduce rogue APs to a secure wired network. The problem is amplified if the wireless local area network (WLAN) consist of multivendor APs. Malicious people can leverage on rogue APs to perform passive or active attacks on a computer network. Therefore, there is need for network administrators to accurately, with less effort, detect and control presence of rogue APs on multivendor WLANs. In this thesis, a solution that can accurately support detection of rogues APs on a multi-vendor AP WLAN without extra hardware or modification of AP firmware is presented. In the solution, information from beacon frames is compared to a set of approved parameters. Intervention of a network administrator is included to prevent MAC address spoofing. A structured methodology was adopted in developing the model on a Windows operating system. Python programming language was used in coding the system with Scapy and Tkinter as the main modules. SQLite database was used to store required data. The system was tested on a setup WLAN that composed of three different access points in a University lab. It was able to capture beacon frames sent by the access points and extracted MAC address, SSID and capability information as the key parameters used in identifying and classifying the access points. The system uses the captured information to automatically compare it against an existing database of authorized parameters. It is then able to classify an access point as either rogue or authorized. The system issued alerts that described the detected APs to a network administrator. The rest of this document gives details of scholarly works that are pertinent to the study, the research methodology used, implementation and testing of the model followed by discussions of findings and the conclusions and recommendations made by the researcher.
Smart fertilizer recommendation through NPK analysis using Artificial Neural Networks
(Strathmore University, 2019) Siva, Faith
Agricultural practices, tools and technologies have taken a new paradigm. Precision agriculture is essential to ensure that site-specific crop management is implemented, which includes soil nutrient remedies per crop requirement. Though fertilization is key in boosting productivity, there is need for analysis of the potentials and limitations of soil as a basis of recommending the correct type, quantities and application time of fertilizers to counter uncertainty in fertilizer use. The complexity of finding the optimal fertilization range greatly contributes to major inefficiencies like productivity losses, resource wastage and increased environmental pollution caused by farmers’ use of intuition, trial and error, guesswork and estimation. With these, farmers cannot accurately predict what impact their decisions will have on the resulting crop yields and the environment. Some solutions implemented for soil fertility management such as use of mobile laboratories or imported equipment have had their share of challenges such cost of implementation, ease of use and adaptation to the local environment. Other available solutions including taking soil to laboratories for testing is tedious, time consuming and inconsistent. This study proposed development of an ANN model that predicts NPK nutrient levels and recommends the best fertilizer remedy and application time based on the weather forecast. This involved use of IoT, machine learning techniques and a weather API through RAD methodology and experimental research design. Historical data of temperature, PH and NPK from KALRO Library was used to train and validate the model. The developed model achieved an RMSE 0.5 with 75% of data used for training and 25% used for testing. This is in effort to encourage precise fertilizer production for particular areas of need.
IoT Based realtime fish pond water quality monitoring model
(Strathmore University, 2019) Obado, Steve Agono
Fish farming contributes significantly to food security in developing countries throughout the world. It supplements income and is a source of protein in majority of rural and urban homes. Fish farmers however, are faced with numerous challenges during the production period and key among them is the monitoring and management of the production resources. Water is the main resource in the fish farming process. The lack of effective monitoring of water quality and timely intervention in instances where there are changes in the quality aspects such as temperature and water levels, has led to resource wastages and losses to the farmer due to low production. However, in Kenya most fish farmers are yet to adopt technology in their production processes. Most farmers rely on their experience when it comes to making decisions in control actions; which most of the time are susceptible to errors due to the complexities involved. The advent of the Internet of Things (IoT) is opening various ways in which farmers can rare fish by simply installing inexpensive sensors which are able to communicate with smartphones and provide a means of monitoring and managing the fish ponds. This research proposes a solution which is a real time fish pond water quality monitoring model which utilizes a smartphone that shall be adopted by the farmers. The model utilizes IoT concept which enables information gathering about water quality through the corresponding sensors. The status of the water quality aspects shall then be relayed on a real time basis through a cloud platform via a microprocessor to a graphical user interface (GUI) on the farmer’s smartphone. The farmer can then act as per the information relayed or the model can automatically act on behalf of the farmer as per the predefined actions. The data gathered by the model can be extracted in various forms for analysis. The real time information shall enable timely intervention by the farmers which eventually helps minimizing or eliminate wastages. A rapid prototyping methodology was used where the requirements of the system were gathered and the components designed and tested throughout the process.
Intellibot data cleaner: a study of Kenya Revenue Authority’s data cleaning exercise
(Strathmore University, 2019) Odero, Jerry Omondi
Data cleaning is an activity involving detecting and correcting errors and inconsistencies in a database, data warehouse or any data record of an organization. Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA) in its quest to be a fully data driven organization, is actively undertaking the data cleaning process. However, this process is currently manual and slow as it involves physical transfer of documents to be processed from the various stations, via different levels of management for approval, to the centralized return processing unit. A process, which might take at least a fortnight for the processing of one taxpayer’s ledger account. Furthermore, this whole process needs lots of man-hours, since there is a vast amount of data to be cleaned due to the many ledger accounts affected during the manual filing system that ended in 2014. There exists many data cleaning processes and approaches which are used to purge out “dirty data”, before it’s loaded into the data warehouse. These processes vary depending on the data source, they are time consuming and expensive for organizations, in terms of skilled staff and the tools involved, hence this research proposed the application of RPA (Robotic Process Automation) to develop an intelligent bot (Intellibot) to be used in the transactional data cleaning exercise in Kenya Revenue Authority (KRA). With the transition from legacy system to I-Tax and I-CMS systems for domestic and customs revenue management respectively, the researcher sought to find out the current data cleaning process in the legacy system. This research led to the development of an RPA system for the current manual data cleaning process implemented and tested using the Blue Prism platform. The system detected the errors – using a knowledge-based model-, clustering them as errors due to uncaptured returns, uncaptured losses or credit re-adjustments. The intellibot system was able to load the ledgers, detect the errors and clean them with utmost precision. Experiments conducted on performance of the bots varied by seconds, in the first experiment. Also in the second performance test, there was a variance of seconds in cleaning the different errors detected, hence improving the data integrity significantly: free of errors, to be migrated to the I-Tax platform, thus support better decision making process in the organization, and a higher return on investments.
A Secure end to end verifiable e-voting system using cryptography: a case of Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission of Kenya
(Strathmore University, 2019) Magonga, William
Elections that are run purely on manual voting system have presented a plethora of challenges that have often affected the credibility of elections done entirely using the traditional manual voting system. Countries round the world are quickly shifting to the use of e-voting systems with such nations already reaping the benefits of running their elections using e-voting systems. However, a number of countries especially in the developing world are yet to embrace a full e-voting platform and this has often affected the election outcomes in such countries. This study sought to evaluate the use of electronic voting systems to address the electoral malpractices in elections. The study proposes an e-voting system that employs a java enterprise application standard which makes use of the tiered design pattern allowing for scalability using distributed approach. All components are an extension of the server to the client machine, allowing for dynamic content delivery. Voters are only allowed to vote once. After voting, the user identity is flagged to prevent another attempt. Any further attempted logins will be denied access. Communication between the client machines and the servers are secured preventing eavesdropping or snooping on the user's identity in transit. Further once the data is delivered to the server, the application environment also provides added layer of security ensuring that only authorized personnel have permission to view data. To further enhance security all user actions on the client terminals are relayed to the server based on event response model. Security logs can be generated based on user activity which can only be viewed by users with administrative rights. The system uses two different databases. The electoral process that involves capturing data is managed using election database. The security aspect that involves starting/stopping the election, managing and viewing of security logs is managed using a security database. Both of them run on MySQL platform. This platform was used because of its compatibility with PHP and other platforms as well as the ability to encrypt passwords before storage. This ensures that confidentiality and integrity aspects are enforced.
An Automatic soiled linen detection prototype for hospital ward caregivers
(Strathmore University, 2019) Akumonyo, Lidonde James
The well-being of a hospital patient is highly prioritized by the provision of a clean and safe environment with the aim of improving the rate of patient’s recovery. Continuous patients’ checks and alert mechanisms are essential to the caregiver in aiding them to ensure a clean and safe environment is maintained for the patient receiving medical care from the facility. The existing system used relies on scheduled visits done by nurses during their shifts to assess the nature of the patients whilst assisting them where necessary. This process is usually cumbersome and prone to neglect which leads to patients getting new hospital-acquired infections. In other cases, the unpredictable nature of patient’s condition may result to high incontinence where the patient may soil linen more frequently due to deterioration of their health condition and this would need to have the caregiver promptly notified when such an event occurs to have the patient linen changed. With this challenge experienced, the study aims to come up with a solution termed as a soiled linen detection prototype to alert hospital ward caregivers of soiled linen. During this process, the researcher employed the use of experimental research to determine the variables essential in soiled linen detection. Together with this prototyping and use of questionnaires were employed to fine tune the system into meeting the users’ requirement as a solution to soiled linen detection challenge. The solution created integrates the idea of IoT with Wireless Sensor Networks. Hospital beds will be attached to humidity and gas sensors that are connected to the IoT device. The bedlinen will cover the sensors and they will transmit the hydrogen sulphide gas levels and humidity levels to the central cloud storage system whenever the safety levels have been exceeded. Upon successfully sending of the information from the IOT equipment the web application automatically picks data entry made to the cloud database storage and displays it on the client GUI awaiting to be handled by the caregiver. The client app GUI is used by the assigned caregiver and the nurse at the central ward station to notify and locate the bed that requires attention allowing proactive response to the patient who requires bedlinen change. The results of this was a prompt notification soiled linen prototype that was able to give notification as soon as the gas and humidity levels were exceeded

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