Master's Thesis Defense!

Sragvi Nidamarti successfully defended his Master’s Thesis ‘Addressing Trust Concerns in the Electric Vehicle Supply Chain: A Knowledge Graph Approach’. The study discusses the socio-economic impact of EV batteries and addresses the trust concerns surrounding it.

Committee : Roberto Yus (University of Maryland, Baltimore County, USA) ; Tim Finnin (University of Maryland, Baltimore County) ; Manas Gaur(University of Maryland, Baltimore County); Konstantinos Mersinas (Royal Holloway University of London)

Customers are increasingly interested in electric vehicles in comparison to gasoline vehicles, resulting in a significant rise in sales in recent years. This change is heavily attributed to factors such as high-quality manufacturing and environmental concerns. However, customers may have concerns regarding the eco-friendliness of the manufacturing process involved and the socio-economic impact (labor law violations) of batteries, possibly due to the newness of the technology involved and a lack of transparency in the process and supply chain. This thesis presents a system to help build trust around this concern. It has a knowledge graph that acts as a base representing standard elements of trust, constructed as an integration of state-of-the-art ontologies in the field. It also includes knowledge about the manufacturing process and the supply chain. With this information, the system uses a mechanism to address the concerns using SPARQL queries that can, among others, label potential trust issues in the manufacturing of electric vehicles. We showcase a use case in which we identify trust issues in certain popular EV manufacturers.