Applied computational trust in utilities management: A case study on The Town Council of Cava de'Tirreni

This paper describes an application of computational trust techniques to enhance the water-supply service information system of the Town of Cava de'Tirreni, Italy. The study case covers a population of almost 52 000 people and about 23 000 consumption contracts. The Town Council is responsible for the water supply service and its billing process. A correct billing process requires gathering water consumption data of each citizen, task that is partially not controllable by Town Council personnel and therefore cannot be accomplished properly without the citizen's cooperation. Bad or malicious data are potentially harmful for both parties. The aim of this experimentation is to exploit computational trust techniques to better manage the process of validation of the received data. Computational Trust added value is represented by its autonomic implementation and by its in-depth consideration of social and environmental variables that go beyond simple data validation. The evaluation section, covering 6 years of data, will present the encouraging results obtained.