[PlanetKR] Research Fellow (2 posts): Multi-Agent Systems for Large-Scale Evolving SCADA - EPSRC PACES Project

[Lluis Godo]

Research Fellow (2 posts):

Multi-Agent Systems for Large-Scale Evolving SCADA - EPSRC PACES
Project Queen's University Belfast

Ref: 12/102064

This newly funded EPSRC project investigates the development of a
novel Multi-Agent System (MAS) architecture supporting SCADA
(Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) systems, built on research
on MAS carried out at IIIA in Barcelona. This architecture is to be
integrated with an advanced event reasoning framework that has been
partially developed at Queen's University Belfast which will fully
exploit sensor data and domain knowledge, including treatment of
inherent uncertainties, incompleteness and inconsistency to
autonomously infer system state and crucially to inform human and
autonomous decision makers in the system. Security issues related to
multi-agent systems for large scale control problems will also be
investigated and such technologies to be integrated into next
generation MASs.


The project will address key challenges presented by multi-agent
systems (MAS) for large scale control systems including planning and
belief change in MAS, uncertainty handling, event correlation and
reasoning and decision support for autonomous functions.


More specifically, the research topics include: (i) developing
multi-agent system architecture for supporting SCADA systems and BDI
models in MAS for collective situation awareness; (ii) developing
belief change models in multi-agent environments and integrating
planning knowledge; (iii) investigating security vulnerabilities in
MAS for SCADA (iv) developing sensor information fusion strategies
under uncertainty and inconsistency; (v) developing (discrete and
continuous) event models and prediction approaches for autonomous
planning and execution; (vi) developing decision support strategies to
provide real-time situation awareness updates to autonomous components
and security personnel; (vii) designing simulators for evaluating
theoretical findings in (i) to (vi).


The two Research Fellows will work closely on these topics with one
Research Fellow primarily working on topics (i), (ii), (iii) and (vii)
and the second on topics (iv), (v), (vi) and (vii).


Both Posts are for three years.


Salary scale: £30,122 - £35,938 per annum


Closing date: Monday 11 June 2012
The interview date: Thursday 28th June.



For future information and on-line application, please follow the link below



http://www.jobs.ac.uk/job/AEL476/research-fellow-2-posts/