Overview of research areas
The research at the Department of Industrial Information and Control Systems is targeted at the development of complete and cost-effective IT-based operation support systems for complex industrial processes. With respect to industries, the electric power industry accounts for approximately half of the department’s engagements, the telecommunication industry accounts for a fourth. The remaining forth is divided among the pulp and paper, manufacturing, railway and defense industries. With the vision of making successful IT implementations commonplace, the department’s research includes the system management process from conceptual planning to operations.
There are four main areas of research. The first area concerns the management processes that lead to systems with desirable properties. We study the planning, operation and maintenance processes as well as procurement, development and modification projects. The second area concerns the system properties. The focus is on understanding what characterizes good systems in terms of their performance, availability and reliability, security, safety, interoperability, modifiability, etc. The third area considers the business impact of the systems, i.e. the relation between the systems and their industrial environment in terms of requirements, utility and costs. The fourth and final area concerns the research tools employed for the previous three areas. Enterprise architectural models for describing the systems and assessment formalisms for evaluating them are developed here.
