Supervision and Safety of Complex Systems

Introduction ¹

 

 

 

The “supervision, safety and security of large systems” theme is currently present at all levels, particularly at the European and national levels. It is relevant to every large facility, infrastructure or organization, whether public or private. It appears, however, that public and private research facilities currently tackle this theme from different angles and in a “scattered” way. This scattering can be explained by the strongly multidisciplinary nature of this area, which does not come under the umbrella of an academic subject. The gathering together of these structures and the industrialists concerned is the best response that can be taken for France to play a leading role in the worldwide development of this major and rapidly emerging field. It is within this framework that at the end of April 2007, MESR (Ministère de l'Enseignement supérieur et de la Recherche - French Ministry of Higher education and Research) founded the scientific interest group: “surveillance, sûreté et sécurité des grands systèmes” (supervision, safety and security of large systems) - GIS 3SGS.

This foundation was prompted by several university laboratories that had noticed that research on models of safety and security assessment is usually contextual, i.e. associated with an industrial object. Scientific initiatives are therefore not really structured around these themes: there is a true scientific challenge to create coherence between global models representing a system and ...