Team

Michel Deriaz

michel_deriaz.jpg

Michel Deriaz, PhD
Lab Director
Phone: +41 22 379 01 04
Email: michel.deriaz (at unige.ch)

After an engineer degree in telecommunications and a master in computer science, Michel Deriaz did a PhD in economic and social sciences. He spent then three years in the industry before coming back at University where he grounded the TaM group. Later he was promoted Professor at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Western Switzerland as well as vice-president of GeoIT, an association bringing together the main actors in geomatics in Switzerland, Germany and Austria.

Media coverage

DateLangTypeTitleMedia
2023-07-26 ro.png article.png Digital Twin anunță lansarea platformei WisdomOfAge TheDaily
2023-07-26 ro.png article.png O companie din România a creat o platformă de mentorat ce pune în legătură profesioniştii vârstnici cu start-up-urile şi IMM-urile Ziarul Financiar
2023-07-26 ro.png article.png Compania românească Digital Twin lansează o platformă care News.ro
2023-07-26 ro.png article.png Digital Twin anunță lansarea platformei WisdomOfAge Financial Intelligence
2022-12-22 fr.png article.png L'intelligence artificielle meilleure que l'être humain ? Hémisphères
2021-12-01 fr.png audio.png Innovation sur le bar à café de mia&noa One FM
2020-09-24 fr.png article.png L’application "QueueForMe" vous libère de l’attente Le Journal de l'UNIGE
2020-06-22 fr.png article.png Une leçon de patience - QueueForMe Migros Magazine
2020-06-19 fr.png article.png QueueForMe as Innosuisse project example Entreprise Romande
2020-03-05 fr.png article.png QueueForMe: révolutionner les files d‘attente IngFLASH
2020-02-13 fr.png video.png Presentation of QueueForMe Radio Lac
2020-01-06 fr.png article.png Presentation of Innosuisse at "Semaine mondiale de l'entrepreneuriat" CCIGinfo
2019-09-29 fr.png video.png Interview of Michel Deriaz at IFA Berlin Le Monde Economique
2017-10-03 pt.png article.png Short appearance of our AAL Forum booth on Portuguese TV SIC Notícias
2016-03-16 fr.pngde.png article.png La connexion dans la peau / Smarte Welt Bilan
2015-11-21 fr.png article.png Géolocalisation «indoor», Saint-Graal du marketing Tribune de Genève
2015-04-18 fr.png article.png La révolution numérique au service des seniors Tribune de Genève
2014-11-16 fr.png article.png Peu d'entreprises s'intéressent aux seniors Le Matin Dimanche
2014-09-23 fr.png article.png La montre qui ne laisse pas tomber les aînés Campus
2014-07-21 fr.png article.png L'Uni développe une supermontre pour protéger les séniors Tribune de Genève
2014-03-01 fr.png article.png Avec Tango, Google lorgne l'intérieur des maisons Tribune de Genève
2013-12-10 fr.png article.png Des audioguides qui géolocalisent les visiteurs Le Temps
2013-09-30 fr.png article.png Une start-up sort un jeu inédit grâce à l'Université Tribune de Genève
2013-09-29 fr.png article.png La Cryptologie a écrit l'Histoire Le Monde Economique
2013-07-01 fr.png article.png L'Université va rendre les seniors plus autonomes Tribune de Genève
2013-06-20 fr.png article.png SIG et seniors Géomatique Expert
2013-05-28 fr.png video.png Qu'est-ce que le positionnement interne ? SES WebTV
2013-05-06 fr.png article.png Que font les smartphones pour les seniors ? Le Monde Economique
2012-10-13 fr.png article.png La cartographie s'ouvre à l’intérieur des bâtiments Tribune de Genève
2012-06-01 fr.png article.png FoxyTag, l'avertisseur de radar 100% autogéré Géomatique Expert
2012-04-23 fr.png article.png Des SMS du XXIe siècle se développent à Genève Tribune de Genève
2012-03-16 fr.png article.png Les promesses et les dangers des outils de géolocalisation Entreprise Romande
2012-02-29 fr.png article.png La géolocalisation, une alternative à l'EMS ? Bilan
2010-12-13 fr.png article.png Un smartphone pour mieux flâner dans les villes 24 heures
2010-11-29 fr.png article.png Tourisme et smartphone : succès du MobileMonday Le Quotidien Jurassien
2010-11-17 fr.png article.png Le marketing en temps réel court après les mobinautes Bilan
2010-09-01 fr.png article.png L'outil qui va changer la vision de Genève Tribune de Genève
2010-09-01 fr.png audio.png Live interview of Michel Deriaz about GeTag Radio Cité
2010-09-01 fr.png article.png GeTag : L'ère du tourisme mobile GHI
2010-09-01 fr.png article.png Se balader au gré de son iPhone 20 Minutes
2010-08-31 fr.png video.png Announcement for GeTag first release Léman Bleu
2010-08-31 fr.png article.png Genève innove en matière de e-tourisme en lançant l'application GeTag Site Ville de Genève
2010-08-31 fr.png video.png Official launch of GeTag by Pierre Maudet Pierre Maudet's blog
2010-04-01 fr.png article.png GeTag : un téléphone portable transformé en guide virtuel pour s'orienter à Genève Vivre à Genève
2010-02-12 fr.png video.png Second TV apparition of GeTag, during Couleurs Locales Télévision Suisse Romande
2010-02-10 fr.png article.png La géolocalisation au service du tourisme urbain ICTjournal
2009-12-28 fr.png article.png Réalité augmentée et tags virtuels Market
2009-11-10 fr.png article.png Le « geotagging » en toute confiance Géomatique Expert
2009-11-05 fr.png article.png La fiabilité de l'information sur iPhone Revue Polytechnique
2009-11-02 fr.png audio.png Presentation of the GeTag project Radio Suisse Romande
2009-10-21 fr.png video.png First TV apparition of GeTag, during the news Léman Bleu
2009-10-09 fr.png article.png La Ville lance le guide touristique électronique Tribune de Genève
2009-08-26 fr.png article.png Comment l'internet nomade va devenir rentable Bilan
2009-07-10 fr.png article.png Les avertisseurs de radars pour mobiles Mobiles
2009-03-23 fr.png article.png Innovation à l'Université de Genève : les tags virtuels Junior Entreprise Genève
2009-02-10 de.png video.png Test of 5 popular applications in Germany, including FoxyTag ProSieben, Galileo
2008-09-14 fr.png article.png TrackerTag : Un avertisseur radar pour votre téléphone Symbian Mashable France
2008-09-13 uk.png article.png Hate speed cameras ? You'll love TrackerTag Mashable
2008-08-19 fr.png article.png Avertir ou détecter un radar : le site antiradar qui nargue la loi 20 Minutes
2008-08-18 fr.png article.png Signalez les radars sur la route via téléphone portable avec FoxyTag TechCrunch France
2008-08-12 fr.png article.png Développez votre propre anti-radar avec l'API FoxyTag MobiFrance
2008-08-10 uk.png article.png Worried of speed radars down the streets ? FoxyTag is the free solution MerchantCircle
2008-05-20 fr.png audio.png Interview of Michel Deriaz about virtual tags Radio Suisse Romande
2008-05-07 fr.png article.png L'avertisseur de radars fixes et mobiles collaboratifs FoxyTag Mobile Commerce
2008-05-07 fr.png article.png L'anti-radar FoxyTag arrive en France Presse-fr
2008-05-01 fr.png article.png Les alertes radars sur son téléphone L'essentiel du mobile
2008-04-29 fr.png article.png FoxyTag : un avertisseur de radars sur votre mobile Autodeclics
2007-09-27 fr.png article.png GPS antiradars : le flou domine Revue Automobile
2007-04-23 uk.png article.png How to beat speed cameras with your mobile Irish Daily Mirror
2007-02-03 de.png video.png A report on FoxyTag SAT.1 Automagazin
2006-12-06 fr.png audio_1.pngaudio_2.png Interview of Michel Deriaz about FoxyTag and other possibilities implying virtual tags NRJ
2006-11-22 fr.png audio.png Presentation of FoxyTag and its main competitors Radio-Lac
2006-11-21 fr.png article.png Un anti-radar sur son portable Tribune de Genève
2006-11-16 de.png video.png A report on FoxyTag SAT.1
2006-11-10 fr.png video_1.pngvideo_2.png A report on FoxyTag followed by an interview of Me Christian Lüscher about the legality of this system Télévision Suisse Romande
2006-11-09 fr.png article.png Une parade high-tech contre les radars Revue Automobile
2006-11-09 de.png article.png Mit dem Handy zum Blitzmerker werden Hamburger Abendblatt
2006-10-30 fr.png audio.png Interview of Michel Deriaz and Jean-Christophe Sauterel, spokesman of the cantonal Police force of Canton Vaud Radio Suisse Romande, during "On en parle"
2006-10-29 de.png article.png Radarwarnung per Handy Kurier
2006-10-27 de.png article.png So warnt Ihr Handy vor Radarfallen Bild
2006-10-26 de.png article.png Das Handy, das Radarfallen überlistet Die Welt
2006-10-26 fr.png article.png Déjouer les radars grâce à son mobile 20 Minutes
2006-10-26 de.png article.png Mit dem Handy Radarfallen austricksen 20 Minuten
2006-10-25 de.png article.png Handy warnt vor Radar Vorarlberg Online
2006-10-25 de.png article.png Handy warnt vor Radarkontrolle Telekom Presse
2006-10-25 de.png article.png Handy warnt vor Radarkontrolle OE24
2006-10-25 de.png article.png Handy warnt vor Radarkontrolle CHIP Online
2006-10-24 de.png article.png Radarfallen-Warnung am Handy Spiegel

Previous projects

List of some projects done before I have created TaM.

  • GeTag (2009-2010) An adaptation of the FoxyTour project for the city of Geneva.
  • FoxyTour (2009-2010) A city and museum guide that adapts automatically to the users' preferences.
  • FoxyTag (2006-2013) A free, legal and collaborative system to signal speed cameras on mobile phones.
  • FoxyNav (2006-2007) Locating and managing rescue boats during the Bol d'Or nautical contest.
  • EDOS (2004-2005) EDOS stands for Environment for the Distribution of Open Source software. This project aimed to develop technologies and tools that improved the production of Linux distributions.
  • RegexSR (2004) A very easy-to-use and powerful tool to test and create complex regular expressions.
  • ECash (2003) An implementation of the e-cash algorithm, allowing users to make anonymous electronic payments over the Internet.
  • Mindstorms Contest (2002) A Lego Mindstorms RCX robot programmed with the Java micro edition language.
  • JRobot (2002) A friendly Java interface that interacts with a Mitsubishi RVM1 robot.

Previous publications

List of some publications done before I have created TaM. My PhD is available here.


The Uncertainty of the Truth, Michel Deriaz. In Sixth Annual Conference on Privacy, Security and Trust, PST2008, Canada, 2008.

Abstract. How to trust without knowing the truth? This is probably the key question that arises while designing applications using virtual tags. A virtual tag is a geo-referenced note that is visible for all the people that are in a specific place. But what if you see a tag about an event or an object that is not here? How to know if you are facing a spam attack, or if the tag is simply outdated? And, how to update the trust values of the author and the other people that confirmed the tag, since you do not know if they are honest? To answer these questions, we designed and implemented FoxyTag, a free and collaborative system which consist in posting virtual tags over speed cameras in order to warn the other drivers. We used it to test our new generic trust engine and got very promising results.


Trust without Truth, Michel Deriaz. In IFIP International Federation for Information Processing, Volume 238, Trust Management, eds. Etalle, s., Marsch, S., (Boston: Springer), pp. 31-45, Canada, 2007.

Abstract. Can we trust without any reliable truth information? Most trust architectures work in a similar way: a trustor makes some observations, rates the trustee, and makes recommendations to his friends. When he faces a new case, he checks his trust table and uses recommendations given by trustworthy friends to decide whether he will undertake a given action. But what if the observations that are used to update the trust tables are wrong? How to deal with what we call the “uncertainty of the truth”? This paper presents how people that publish and remove virtual tags are able to create trust relations between them. A simulator as well as a concrete and widely deployed application have been used to validate our model. We observed good and encouraging results in general, but also some weaknesses, brought out through specific scenarios.


Trust and Security in Spatial Messaging: FoxyTag, the Speed Camera Case Study, Michel Deriaz, Jean-Marc Seigneur. In Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Privacy, Security and Trust, ACM, 2006.

Abstract. Current speed cameras alerting systems heavily rely on humans to check the trustworthiness of information sent by their users. Hence, these systems are often either expensive or suffer from drawbacks, such as incomplete information, for example, concerning mobile speed cameras. We propose an application called FoxyTag to address most of the previous issues by using a computational trust engine instead of human checks. FoxyTag lets any driver equipped with a Java/GPS enabled mobile phone post a virtual tag about a speed camera to notify other equipped drivers who can confirm or deny the (short-lived) presence of the (mobile) camera. The novel aspect of our trust engine is that it must be location and time aware to automatically compute the trustworthiness of the given tag. We have validated FoxyTag both in real-life settings and with a simulator for large-scale scenarios. The validation showed that our novel time-patterned trust metrics are appropriate.


Towards Trustworthy Spatial Messaging, Michel Deriaz, Jean-Marc Seigneur. In Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Security and Trust Management, ERCIM, ENTCS, 2006.

Abstract. Spatial messaging is a term that defines the virtual publication of data in physical places. Generally, anyone in the neighborhood of such a publication point gets the message. Frameworks allowing the users to publish freely spatial messages already exist. However, the experiences realized with volunteers showed that there is only little interest in posting such notes. To our view, the main reason is that there are currently no trust and security mechanisms that inform about the trustworthiness of the messages, thus preventing any serious application. Filling this gap will promote the success of spatial messaging and the growing success of localization and mobile techniques will provide a good support for this concept. This paper describes the spatial messaging services that we are in the process to deploy with our new spatial messaging framework, which includes trust and security mechanisms.


A Social Semantic Infrastructure for Decentralised Systems Based on Specification-Carrying Code and Trust, Giovanna Di Marzo Serugendo, Michel Deriaz. In Proceedings of the Socially-Inspired Computing Workshop, pp. 143-152, D. Hales and B. Edmonds (Eds), Invited paper, 2005.

Abstract. Decentralised systems made of autonomous devices and software are gaining more and more interest. These autonomous elements usually do not know each other in advance and act without any central control. They thus form a society of devices and software, and as such need: basic interaction mechanisms for understanding each other, and a social infrastructure supporting interactions taking place in an uncertain environment. In an effort to go beyond pre-established communication schema and to cope with uncertainty, this paper proposes an interaction mechanism based exclusively: on semantic information expressed using specifications, and on a social infrastructure relying on trust and reputation.


Specification-Carrying Code for Self-Managed Systems, Giovanna Di Marzo Serugendo, Michel Deriaz. In IFIP/IEEE International Workshop on Self-Managed Systems and Services, 2005.

Abstract. This paper proposes the notion of Specification-Carrying Code as an interaction mechanism for self-assembly of autonomous decentralised software components. Each autonomous software entity incorporates more information than its operational behaviour, and publishes more data than its signature. The idea is to provide separately, for each entity, a functional part implementing its behaviour - the traditional program code; and an abstract description of the entity's functional behaviour and necessary parameters - a semantic behavioural description under the form of a formal specification. Interactions are exclusively based on the specifications and occur among entities with corresponding specifications. In the case of autonomic computing systems, in addition to functional aspects, the specification may carry a semantic description of non-functional information related to self-management. This paper presents the principles of the Specification-Carrying Code paradigm, the associated Service-Oriented Architecture, and it explains how self-managed systems can benefit from this paradigm.