Participants

The participants in the project are:


Queen Mary, University of London ( www.elec.qmul.ac.uk)

Queen Mary is one of the four large Colleges of the federal University of London and its Department of Electronic Engineering was given one of the top ratings (5) for research in the 1996 UK Research Assessment Exercise. Within the Department the two groups participating in this project are the Telecoms group (with expertise in complex systems) and the Intelligent Systems group (with expertise in agent technology). The Telecoms group has been very active in RACE and the ACTS research since 1987 participating in a wide range of projects including RACE R1022, EXPLOIT and EXPERT in ACTS. The Intelligent Systems group contributed to the ESPRIT II project ARCHON (Europe's largest ever multi-agent project) on the development of the agent architecture and its deployment in real world domains. These applications were some of the first real-size applications built using agent technology. The most relevant project, however, in which both groups worked together, are the ACTS project IMPACT (concerned with using Agent Technology to set up connections in ATM networks) and the IST project SHUFFLE, where Agents are being used to manage resources in a 3G mobile network. [Top]


Aplicaciones en Informática Avanzada (AIA) ( www.aia.es )

Aplicaciones en Informática Avanzada (AIA), founded in 1988, is one of the few Spanish companies dedicated to the Consulting and Engineering of Software and Information Systems that strongly emphasizes innovation. Its headquarters are located in the Parque Tecnológico del Vallés (Barcelona, Spain), an industrial area restricted to high technology companies. AIA research and development activities are centred on: forecasting, optimisation, classification and Artificial Intelligence techniques and advanced software. Since its creation, AIA has contributed to satisfy the expectations generated by the market, solving complex problems in the industry and in the business world through the use of the mentioned techniques even as these experienced a rapid evolution.

The objective of the AIA Group is the transformation of information into knowledge, where the client is considered as a collaborating participant. The AIA Group was originally founded in Barcelona, and has recently expanded to Madrid through the opening of a new delegation in order to attend its clients needs, as well as the high demand for its products and solutions. The AIA Group principal objective is the production of a real and calculable economic benefit for its clients, this is achieved through innovation using basic sciences and Artificial Intelligence. For more than 12 years, the AIA Group has reached this objective, supplying unique solutions for the more important companies in Spain, as for example Red BCH , O.N.C.E., ENDESA, Siemens, OpenBank , Bankpyme, Caja Madrid , Unión Fenosa, Caixa Tarragona , Metro de Barcelona, Grupo RETEVISION , Gas Natural Madrid, Grupo Banc Sabadell , Red Eléctrica de España, Ferrocarriles de la Generalitat, Caja de Ahorros del Mediterráneo, Min. De Economía y Hacienda , Caixa d’Estalvis i Pensions de Barcelona.

The AIA Group has developed various powerful tools for grouping, analysing, forecasting and distributing information. This technology, combined with a highly qualified team of PhDs, physicians, mathematicians, Telecommunications Engineers, Computer Science Engineer, and software developers, allows the AIA Group to develop Solutions that are Complete and at the same time Tailored to the needs of its clients. Developed solutions for the Energy sector: Intelligent Control System for Electrical Networks allowing for the restoration of disturbances and of general power cut; Intelligent Optimization System for Hydraulic Planning; Intelligent Observation Tools to assist the energy management centres in the decisions related to the elaboration of bids in the daily energy market; Load Forecasting System (Electrical or Gas); Market Models: clearing price algorithms and design of equilibriums; Risk Management via futures and options for the energy market; Intelligent Tools for the Management of privileged clients. [Top]


ENEA ( www.enea.it )

ENEA is a government research and innovation organisation operating to further sustainable economic development, competitiveness, job creation, and environmental protection. ENEA also operates on behalf of public administrations by providing advanced services in the areas of energy, environment and technological innovation. In particular, ENEA:

  1. Conducts, develops and promotes research and innovation in the interest of sustainable development, partly by creating demonstration facilities and pilot projects, in the framework of the national research programme and in line with national commitments in the areas of energy, environment and technological innovation deriving from italy's membership in the European Union and other international organisations;
  2. Supports innovation processes within the economy, especially among small and medium-size enterprises, in part by stimulating demand for research and technology conforming to the principles of sustainable development;
  3. Promotes the transfer of technology and positive experiences in the fields of energy and environment to public administrations and small and medium-size enterprises in furtherance of national and European Union objectives;
  4. Provides specialised technical and organisational support in its own areas of competence to public agencies acting in the national or international spheres, and to the regional and local governments, upon request and under programme agreements with various Ministries (Industry, Trade, Environment, Universities and Research) and other public administrations.

ENEA, which has a staff of around 3,500, is present throughout Italy, operating nine major Research Centres and a number of smaller facilities. Inside ENEA Engineering Division, the Section on Information Technology for Plant Safety and Management is aimed to introduce safe and reliable operation in the industrial high risk plants and critical infrastructures, with the benefit of R&D advances and related technical solutions (http://tisgi.casaccia.enea.it/). The Section has a solid technical basis and experience, with international links, in the areas of computer based systems for safety applications, emergencies and crisis management, process simulation. R&D activities carried out in these areas cover, but are not limited to, dependability and survivability analysis, formal methods, intelligent agents, Case-Based Reasoning, neural networks, fuzzy logic, process simulation. The results of R&D activities have direct applications in a range of industrial sectors, as demonstrated by a number of projects carried out in co-operation with industrial partners and/or in the framework of EU research programs.  [Top]


Linköping University; ( www.liu.se/en )

The Laboratory of Real-time Systems is one of four research laboratories in the division of Software and Systems in Dept. of Computer & Information Science, Linköping University. This is the largest computer science department in Sweden with 230 employees.

The group is led by Simin Nadjm-Tehrani since January 2000 and has currently 6 PhD students and several Masters students supervised by 3 faculty members. The lab is going through an expansion period is expected to produce 2 PhDs during 2001 and employ 3 new doctoral students.

RTSLAB areas of competence range over: real-time distributed systems, specially fault-tolerance and replication, formal models of reactive and hybrid systems, agent simulations and adjustable autonomy, real-time databases, component-based system development and middleware, systems engineering, information exchange models, and tool integration. We have two projects on the "Analysis of replication-based fault-tolerance (FT) in middleware for distributed systems" started in 2001 and and are currently seeking a European IST4 (Trial) project together with EPFL Luasanne and Ericsson Radio Systems (one of the worlds largest developers of telecom Operation and Supervision Systems). The latter project is specifically about the study of FT mechanisms in the FT-CORBA specification as proposed by OMG, to be tested in the telecom sector. In the context of these projects we have two PhD students started in 2000 and already studied CORBA extensions towards FT and Quality of Service (QoS) guarantees, with two resulting survey reports. An additional student is expected to join the work in 2002. [Top]


Swisscom (Corporate Technology) ( www.swisscom.ch )

With revenues of over CHF 11 billion in 1999 and with a headcount of around 21,000 employees today - including 750 apprentices - Swisscom is Switzerland's leading telecommunications provider. The innovative, customer-driven and highly competitive company provides comprehensive solutions in mobile and fixed-line voice and data communications, as well as in e-business.

Swisscom operates a Corporate Technology unit (CT), with a staff of currently 170, devoted to technology exploration, and promoting innovation and technology transfer. Expert knowledge is systematically built up by exploratory work in programmes covering all areas relevant for the emergence of the information society. Application projects on behalf of the business units as well as the support of task forces then provide for a continuous transfer of expertise into business-relevant innovations.

Corporate Technology, having a tradition in participating in international RTD programmes (like IST, ACTS, and Eurescom), is the Swisscom unit involved in the present project. [Top]