Critical systems are defined as those systems, natural or industrial, that can impact severely on human well-being when they go wrong. Decision makers need to know when things are likely to go wrong, and to make the right decisions to avert disaster.
Enter Ioannis Dokas, a Greek civil engineer, who has been awarded a grant to develop early warning systems for Ireland’s water treatment plants. The goal he has set himself over the five years is to develop a computer modelling system to monitor our water treatment plants, and be capable of alerting decision makers when there is a problem developing, and to provide them with information to deal with the problem.
Ioannis moved to Ireland in January 2007 to the Cork Constraint Computer Centre, UCC, from at Otto Von Guericke University Madeburg. In Germany he had been on a Marie Curie fellowship focused on developing what he terms ‘knowledge-based systems for decision support’. The focus here was primarily on developing early warning systems for landfill sites, and his system sought to incorporate all the knowledge contained within an organisation running the landfill, public or private.
“The knowledge from the entire organisation that runs the landfill, whether that is a local authority or a private company can be modelled,” said Ioannis. “The tools for the model have a universal language made up of diagrams, arrows, circles, symbols that mean something and can be understood by everyone. A manager of a landfill could use this system to alert his supervisor that if the landfill continues to be run in the same way that these types of problems will arise. An organisation will typically use the system to try and minimise events that they don’t want to happen. With landfills that could be leaks, emissions, and leachate going into the groundwater.”
While in Madeburg, Ioannis saw an advertisement seeking applications from those interested in doing research into ‘ontology in decision support systems’. Ontology in this context means knowledge of the reality of systems in question. In other words, how decisions about important systems are made in reality by decision makers, and how the knowledge upon which these decisions are currently made can be improved. He was immediately interested, applied for funding, and was approved.
Ioannis is currently in the process of setting up his research team and one of the first goals will be to develop a language that can be used by everyone that has a direct interest in early warning systems for water treatment plants. When this is achieved, the business of gathering knowledge about the organisations running Ireland’s water treatment plants will begin, and a computer model reflecting that knowledge built.
Ioannis said there is a lack of research worldwide into how to develop and design human centred early warning systems, even though big organisations, like the UN, have been talking a lot about developing such systems in the last few years. All of these discussions were triggered following the Asian Tsunami, he said, and this lead to people thinking how monitoring systems that could be applied to potential natural disasters, as well as industrial risks and hazards, can be put in place to save lives.
