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WP # 3: Complexity – Industry Connections

WP3 makes the connection of STREPs to technological application areas and in particular to infrastructure networks. The effort is to make the connection between real life situations and the Complexity STREPs ideas such as multi-level analysis and network properties. We will measure the success of our interface with the industry by the participation of industrial partners to WP3. We hope to have major organizations maintaining a significant level of cooperation with the STREPs. We will invest much effort that the knowledge transferred by the STREPs will induce practical applications. We will document these eventual applications in our reports and publish it to a wider audience (WP1).

Leading institution:
ENEA - ENTE PER LE NUOVE TECNOLOGIE, L'ENERGIA E L'AMBIENTE - ROMA, ITALY
WP leader:
Dr. Sandro Bologna
bologna(at)casaccia.enea.it

Objectives

The objectives of this WP are to:

  • make the connection between young researchers working in the Complexity STREPS and the industrial applications,
  • facilitate common PhD projects between complexity STREPs and industry.

The analysis of large and complex systems and, particularly, that of their interdependencies is a challenging domain on both a theoretical and a technological points of view, as was highlighted by some of the STREPs. Because of their intrinsic non-linearity, of the non-deterministic and time-dependent behaviour, complex infrastructures, in their actual configurations, lead the existing control models to be mostly inadequate. The various aspects of interactive infrastructure networks present a number of theoretical and practical challenges in modelling, simulation, prediction, and analysis in coupled and uncoupled systems. These systems comprise an heterogeneous mixture of dynamic, interactive, and often non-linear entities, unscheduled discontinuities, and several other significant effects. Existing mathematical models of such systems are vague and no methodologies for the understanding of the behaviour of these complex networks exist. A new direction has to be imparted to technology to provide tools that might capitalize the most recent issues coming from different STREPs and different scientific areas (mainly physics, biology, maths). The science of complex systems is considered particularly relevant to the study of these systems, since their topological properties up to the modelling of their emerging behaviour. Additionally, in many complex networks, the human factor on one side results to be the most prone to errors, on the other side is, in turn, the most adaptable in management and recovery. Thus, modelling these networks will need to include the bounded rationality of actual human thinking, modelling the interactions between technological networks and social networks.

Unfortunately, the science of infrastructure interdependencies is relatively immature. It is our belief that in order to achieve further progress, one has to insure the contact between the practitioners in this field and between complexity research such as the STREPs.

The present WP is thus aimed at transferring knowledge forth and back between real technological applications, the theoretical work such as that of the STREPs, This is a multi-disciplinary approach where single specific entities, driven by rules belonging to given contexts (sociology, biology, communication engineering etc.) are described within some unifying operational model and, then, coupled to other entities for the building up of comprehensive model of some real-world compartment.

In particular, the activities proposed will be related to:

  • creating a discussion forum within GIACS and between the STREPs to define the conceptual framework for the initiation of common research projects,
  • ensuring that young researchers from either side (industry  / university research) can be exposed, apply and be accepted in the appropriate frameworks of the other side,
  • ensuring that the main problems of the industrial applications are exposed to the young complexity researchers in STREPs.

Instruments

Information will be required from the GIACS/STREPs partners and from industrial partners acting in the relevant areas. Based on this the researchers and the industries likely to interact will be invited to a meeting.

At this meeting, the possible common issues are to be presented to the scientific and technology communities in the frame of one of the dissemination workshops organized by GIACS, in a special session specifically devoted to this topic. The presentation will produce a first feedback providing further insights and connections between possible partners (possibly including major industrial members of the Italian Working Group on Critical Infrastructure Protection; among others Telecom Italia, the major operator of the Italian telecommunication network, GRTN, the operator of the Italian electricity network, RFI, the operator of the Italian railway network, plus representatives of different Ministries).
A further level of interaction will be supporting bilateral visits between likely coworkers from industry and STREPs.

 

Attachements

Deliverables:

Selection of relevant papers for Complexity Science
Industrial Applications