Emerging Informatics

The book on emerging informatics brings together the new concepts and applications that will help define and outline problem solving methods and features in designing business and human systems. It covers international aspects of information systems design in which many relevant technologies are introduced for the welfare of human and business systems. This initiative can be viewed as an emergent area of informatics that helps better conceptualise and design new world-class solutions. The book provides four flexible sections that accommodate total of fourteen chapters. The section specifies learning contexts in emerging fields. Each chapter presents a clear basis through the problem conception and its applicable technological solutions. I hope this will help further exploration of knowledge in the informatics discipline

Multi-objective optimization for time-based preventive maintenance within the transport network: a review

Preventive maintenance in transportation is essential not only to safeguard billions in business and infrastructure investment, but also to guarantee safety, reliability and efficacy within the network. Government, industry and society have been increasingly recognising the importance of keeping transport units condition well-preserved. The challenge, however, is to achieve optimal performance of the existing transport systems within acceptable costs, effective workforce use and minimum disruption. Those are generally conflicting objectives. Multi-objective optimisation approaches have served as powerful tools to assist stakeholders to properly deploy preventive maintenance in industry. In this study, we review the research conducted in the application of multi-objective optimisation for preventive maintenance in transport-related activities. We focus on time-based preventive maintenance for production, infrastructure, rail and energy providers. In our review, we are interested in aspects such as the types of problems addressed, the existing objectives, the approaches to solutions, and how the outcomes obtained support decision

Certifications of Critical Systems – The CECRIS Experience

In recent years, a considerable amount of effort has been devoted, both in industry and academia, to the development, validation and verification of critical systems, i.e. those systems whose malfunctions or failures reach a critical level both in terms of risks to human life as well as having a large economic impact.Certifications of Critical Systems – The CECRIS Experience documents the main insights on Cost Effective Verification and Validation processes that were gained during work in the European Research Project CECRIS (acronym for Certification of Critical Systems). The objective of the research was to tackle the challenges of certification by focusing on those aspects that turn out to be more difficult/important for current and future critical systems industry: the effective use of methodologies, processes and tools.The CECRIS project took a step forward in the growing field of development, verification and validation and certification of critical systems. It focused on the more difficult/important aspects of critical system development, verification and validation and certification process. Starting from both the scientific and industrial state of the art methodologies for system development and the impact of their usage on the verification and validation and certification of critical systems, the project aimed at developing strategies and techniques supported by automatic or semi-automatic tools and methods for these activities, setting guidelines to support engineers during the planning of the verification and validation phases

Verification Report

The main input for this deliverable was the Moving Block Specification (Deliverable D4.1, X2Rail-5), defining an ETCS L3 trackside system with moving block ("L3 trackside"). This document describes safety requirements for L3 trackside, in terms of a fault tree-based approach applied at the system of systems (SoS) level, evaluation and refinement of safety hazards for L3 trackside, and results from Formal Methods (FMs) application for V&V of requirements.Safety requirements for L3 trackside implementations should, if fulfilled, ensure that all relevant safety hazards are mitigated. In principle, this should be possible to achieve by: 1. Using a systematic approach to determine the safety hazards at the system of systems level, and apportion the relevant hazards to the L3 trackside subsystem, and 2. Defining safety requirements that are configurable for the different types of L3 trackside systems, and other static configuration data

Certifications of Critical Systems – The CECRIS Experience

In recent years, a considerable amount of effort has been devoted, both in industry and academia, to the development, validation and verification of critical systems, i.e. those systems whose malfunctions or failures reach a critical level both in terms of risks to human life as well as having a large economic impact.Certifications of Critical Systems – The CECRIS Experience documents the main insights on Cost Effective Verification and Validation processes that were gained during work in the European Research Project CECRIS (acronym for Certification of Critical Systems). The objective of the research was to tackle the challenges of certification by focusing on those aspects that turn out to be more difficult/important for current and future critical systems industry: the effective use of methodologies, processes and tools.The CECRIS project took a step forward in the growing field of development, verification and validation and certification of critical systems. It focused on the more difficult/important aspects of critical system development, verification and validation and certification process. Starting from both the scientific and industrial state of the art methodologies for system development and the impact of their usage on the verification and validation and certification of critical systems, the project aimed at developing strategies and techniques supported by automatic or semi-automatic tools and methods for these activities, setting guidelines to support engineers during the planning of the verification and validation phases

Manifest domains:analysis and description

Abstract We show that manifest domains, an understanding of which are a prerequisite for software requirements prescriptions, can be precisely described: narrated and formalised. We show that such manifest domains can be understood as a collection of endurant, that is, basically spatial entities: parts, components and materials, and perdurant, that is, basically temporal entities: actions, events and behaviours. We show that parts can be modeled in terms of external qualities whether: atomic or composite parts, having internal qualities: unique identifications, mereologies, which model relations between parts, and attributes. We show that the manifest domain analysis endeavour can be supported by a calculus of manifest domain analysis prompts: is_entity, is_endurant, is_perdurant, is_part, is_component, is_material, is_atomic, is_composite, has_components, has_materials, has_concrete_type, attribute_names, is_stationary, etcetera; and show how the manifest domain description endeavour can be supported by a calculus of manifest domain description prompts: observe_part_sorts, observe_part_type, observe_components, observe_materials, observe_unique_identifier, observe_mereology, observe_attributes. We show how to model attributes, essentially following Michael Jackson (Software requirements &amp; specifications: a lexicon of practice, principles and prejudices. ACM Press, Addison-Wesley, Reading, 1995 ), but with a twist: The attribute model introduces the attribute analysis prompts is_static_attribute, is_dynamic_attribute, is_inert_attribute, is_reactive_attribute, is_active_attribute, is_autonomous_attribute, is_biddable_attribute and is_programmable_attribute. The twist suggests ways of modeling “access” to the values of these kinds of attributes: the static attributes by simply “copying” them, once, the reactive and programmable attributes by “carrying” them as function parameters whose values are kept always updated, and the remaining, the external_attributes, by inquiring, when needed, as to their value, as if they were always offered on CSP-like channels (Hoare, Communicating sequential processes. C.A.R. Hoare series in computer science. Prentice-Hall International, London, 2004 ). We show how to model essential aspects of perdurants in terms of their signatures based on the concepts of endurants. And we show how one can “compile” descriptions of endurant parts into descriptions of perdurant behaviours. We do not show prompt calculi for perdurants. The above contributions express a method with principles, techniques and tools for constructing domain descriptions. It is important to realise that we do not wish to nor claim that the method can describe all that it is interesting to know about domains. </jats:p

Risk-Based Optimal Scheduling for the Predictive Maintenance of Railway Infrastructure

In this thesis a risk-based decision support system to schedule the predictive maintenance activities, is proposed. The model deals with the maintenance planning of a railway infrastructure in which the due-dates are defined via failure risk analysis.The novelty of the approach consists of the risk concept introduction in railway maintenance scheduling, according to ISO 55000 guidelines, thus implying that the maintenance priorities are based on asset criticality, determined taking into account the relevant failure probability, related to asset degradation conditions, and the consequent damages

Wireless Sensor Networks for Condition Monitoring in the Railway Industry : a Survey

In recent years, the range of sensing technologies has expanded rapidly, whereas sensor devices have become cheaper. This has led to a rapid expansion in condition monitoring of systems, structures, vehicles, and machinery using sensors. Key factors are the recent advances in networking technologies such as wireless communication and mobile adhoc networking coupled with the technology to integrate devices. Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) can be used for monitoring the railway infrastructure such as bridges, rail tracks, track beds, and track equipment along with vehicle health monitoring such as chassis, bogies, wheels, and wagons. Condition monitoring reduces human inspection requirements through automated monitoring, reduces maintenance through detecting faults before they escalate, and improves safety and reliability. This is vital for the development, upgrading, and expansion of railway networks. This paper surveys these wireless sensors network technology for monitoring in the railway industry for analyzing systems, structures, vehicles, and machinery. This paper focuses on practical engineering solutions, principally,which sensor devices are used and what they are used for; and the identification of sensor configurations and network topologies. It identifies their respective motivations and distinguishes their advantages and disadvantages in a comparative review