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Formal reduction of interfaces to large-scale process control systems

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Abstract

A formal methodology is proposed to reduce the amount of information displayed to remote human operators at interfaces to large-scale process control plants of a certain type. The reduction proceeds in two stages. In the first stage, minimal reduced subsets of components, which give full information about the state of the whole system, are generated by determining functional dependencies between components. This is achieved by using a temporal logic proof obligation to check whether the state of all components can be inferred from the state of components in a subset in specified situations that the human operator needs to detect, with respect to a finite state machine model of the system and other human operator behavior. Generation of reduced subsets is automated with the help of a temporal logic model checker. The second stage determines the interconnections between components to be displayed in the reduced system so that the natural overall graphical structure of the system is maintained. A formal definition of an aesthetic for the required subgraph of a graph representation of the full system, containing the reduced subset of components, is given for this purpose. The methodology is demonstrated by a case study.

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Correspondence to Walter Hussak.

Additional information

This work was supported by the Royal Society in the UK (No.2004R1). An initial study appeared in Proceedings of IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man and Cybernetics, the Hague, Netherlands, pp. 124–129, 2004.

Walter Hussak graduated in mathematics, obtaining the B.Sc. degree in 1979 and the Ph.D. degree in 1983 from Sheffield University. After that he worked as a programmer and studied part-time for an M.Sc. in systems design at Manchester University, awarded in 1987, specializing in formal methods. He joined Manchester University as a research associate before he was appointed to his first university full academic post as a lecturer in computer science at Loughborough University in 1991. He has published several papers at international conferences and in journals, on uses of formal methods in the design and implementation of large-scale systems. Overall he has published six refereed journal and seven conference papers in applied formal methods.

His research interests include logic, formal methods, Database concurrency, and graph theory.

Shuang-Hua Yang received his Ph.D. degree in control engineering from Zhejiang University in 1991. He is currently a professor of networks and control in computer science and the director of the Networks and Control Research Group at Loughborough University in the UK. He is also an overseas guest professor at Central China Normal University, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China University of Petroleum, and Liaoning University of Petroleum and Technology. He is a member of the EPSRC peer review college in the UK. He is also a fellow of the Institute of Measurement and Control, the chairman of the East Midlands Section of the Institute, and a chartered engineer (CEng) in the UK. He is a senior member of IEEE. He serves as an associate editor of International Journal of Systems Science and the International Journal of Process Systems Engineering, and a member of the editorial advisory board of International Journal of Information and Computer Security and Journal of the Institute of Measurement and Control.

His research interests include wireless sensor networks, networked control, safety critical systems, and real time software maintenance.

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Hussak, W., Yang, SH. Formal reduction of interfaces to large-scale process control systems. Int J Automat Comput 4, 413–421 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11633-007-0413-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11633-007-0413-9

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