LSCITS-RPv2: Large-Scale Complex IT Systems Initiative - Research Programme v2
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Bristol
Department Name: Computer Science
Abstract
We intend to establish a UK National strategic coordinated research and training initiative centred on issues in the science and engineering of Large-Scale Complex IT Systems (LSCITS: pronounced else-its). We propose the creation of a coordinated national network of researchers in industry and academia with the skills and knowledge appropriate to dealing with the problems of designing, managing, and main-taining current and future LSCITS across their life-cycles. Pursu-ng research that addresses these problems, and training the researchers who will undertake that research or apply its findings in practice, are two major strategic needs at the national level. The proposed Initiative's programme of work is intended to last for five years, but it is our intent that this be viewed as a period of pump-priming ramp-up , establishing at steady-state a well-coordinated community of interacting researchers, self-sustaining by generating ongoing financial support from public funds and from industrial sponsorship and collaborations. Thus we include here a discussion of our plans for continuing the Initiative beyond its fifth year. Total funds requested from EPSRC are approx 9.6m, of which 4m is dedicated to establishing and running an Engineering Doctorate (EngD) training programme, and 5.6m is dedicated to funding a coordinated set of research work-packages. Both the EngD and the research programme are intended to be conducted with close involvement from industry. The EngD proposal will be submitted separately, once the outcome of this application for 5.6m funding of the research programme is known.Our proposal marks the formation of a new partnership between leading academics from five UK universities, who each have significant histories of research and education leadership in complementary aspects of the science and engineering of LSCITS. Additionally, all five of the authors of this proposal have very strong links into relevant companies across several major sectors of UK industry. Companies who have indicated an intent to be-come involved in significant ways at this stage include Accenture, BAE Systems, BT, DSTL, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Praxis, Qinetiq, and Rolls-Royce. Our Case For Support document presents a broad picture of our proposal and sets out what we plan to achieve. It should be read in conjunction with its extensive appendices which provide inter alia a significantly more detailed discussion of the background, research work-plan, EngD, exploitation/IPR strategies, and community-building activities.Our overall approach can be characterised as follows. The complexity that is inherent in large-scale systems stems from a variety of causes. These systems are often designed to address so-called 'wicked problems' which, by their very nature cannot be completely defined: they have to meet the (rapidly changing) needs of diverse stakeholders; they must integrate with a range of other legacy systems, processes and policies; they may be critical systems that have to deliver both a high level of performance and dependability; and they are profoundly affected by political influences in the organisations developing and procuring the system, and in the broader system's environment. While it would be simplistic to suggest that we can address all of the problems, we believe that we can make significant progress by altering our perspective on the engineering of large-scale complex IT systems. Rather than considering this to be a problem of specifying, developing, deploying and operating a large-scale system, , we believe that we should look at the problem as being a system of systems problem. By examining the relationships between the different systems that make up and interact with each other, and the systems involved in procuring, deploying and operating software, we believe that we can make headway in tackling the issue of complexity.
Publications
Adolfo Hernando (Co-Author)
(2010)
A Model-Based Approach to the Autonomic Management of Mobile Robot Resources
Baxter G
(2013)
Flying by the seat of their pants
Baxter G
(2012)
The ironies of automation
Baxter G
(2011)
Socio-technical systems: From design methods to systems engineering
in Interacting with Computers
Burton F
(2012)
Modelling Foundations and Applications
Byerly Flint H
(2022)
You vs. us: framing adaptation behavior in terms of private or social benefits.
in Climatic change
Büscher M
(2009)
Designing for Diagnosing: Introduction to the Special Issue on Diagnostic Work
in Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW)
Title | A View from the FInancial Markets |
Description | Presentation by Gillian Tett, US Managing Editor of the Financial Times, at the LSCITS Annual Symposium. Gillian discusses the bank practices that led to the financial crash. She talks about the revolution that was going on at grass roots level and how many bankers couldn't actually explain what was going on as they only understood their particular piece of the puzzle. Gillian explains how very few people were looking at the system as a whole. She presents some fascinating insights into the issues and uses interesting metaphors to illustrate her views. She goes on to explain how things have changed and become more transparent, how regulation has helped and how things are moving forward. However, she explains that the fundamental issue that plagues the financial system, and many systems in the modern world, are more interconnected now than ever before and what happens in one corner of the system can affect other corners of the system very very rapidly in ways that are often unpredictable, and yet the paradox is that as our systems grow in complexity and interconnectedness the fragmentation cognitively and structurally keeps growing because innovation is accelerating, education is becoming more and more intense and the level of technical understanding needed to understand these systems is rising. Therefore we are creating many silos of expertise where anyone outside of a particular silo has no idea what is going on. Watch the video for further information, conclusions etc. |
Type Of Art | Film/Video/Animation |
Year Produced | 2012 |
Title | Architecture for Communication Systems Modeling |
Description | Duncan Tait is an LSCITS EngD student, sponsored by Thales, and in this video he talks about his EngD project 'An Integration Architecture for Communication Network Systems Modelling'. Duncan works in the Radio Communication Products Group at Thales. This talk poses the question 'How can communication network systems modelling improve business performance?'. This breaks down into sub questions on 'What means of modelling are available?', 'Application to improing business performance', 'How should a modelling capability be constructed?', 'Modelling for optimising system configurations and novel technologies', 'Does the modelling reveal emergent/complex behaviour, and can it be planned for? The video decribes his approach to these problems and the outcomes to date. |
Type Of Art | Film/Video/Animation |
Year Produced | 2012 |
Title | Change Point Detection |
Description | Chris Musselle summarises his PhD research which was funded by LSCITS and Bristol Centre for Complexity Sciences. Chris talks about Change Point Detection across multiple data streams via dimensionality reduction and subspace tracking. There is a growing interest in data stream research and many real world applications such as; environmental monitoring, financial data analysis, sensor networks, computer network security and data centre management. There are three key challenges discussed in this video. One is the massive amounts of data arriving at high rates, the second is the wish to perform near to real-time monitoring so anomalies can be responded to quickly, and the third is the need for adaptive components. Chris talks about the algorithm he developed to perform change point detection in multiple data streams, the need to find a way to filter detected change points further to find those that are genuinely anomalous events, and how future work will address machine learning solutions to this problem. |
Type Of Art | Film/Video/Animation |
Year Produced | 2012 |
Title | Classifying Mouse Sleep States |
Description | Alex Fargus, 3rd year LSCITS EngD student talks about 'Automated Sleep Stage Classification in Mice'. Alex talks about common characterics of LSCITS and the Mouse Brain and how his research with neuroscientists is applicable to LSCITS problems ie; monitoring complex systems. The main problem discussed is the difficulty in assessing the overall health of the system due to missing information about key components, behaviour of system not being understood, and the inconsistent understanding of stakeholders. Alex goes on to describe his experiments on identifying the state of the mouse brain and how his conclusions are relevant to LSCITS. |
Type Of Art | Film/Video/Animation |
Year Produced | 2012 |
Title | Complexity in Organisations |
Description | Presentation by Justin Keen, Leeds Institute of Health Sciences, University of Leeds, at the LSCITS Symposium, York, 12th June 2013. The 'Complexity in Organisations' research focussed on healthcare - Care Pathways and Government Policies. This video summarises the findings and discusses where we go next. |
Type Of Art | Film/Video/Animation |
Year Produced | 2013 |
Title | Controllers for Real-Time Scheduling |
Description | Talk by Hasham Ghazzawi, LSCITS EngD student on a submitted paper titles 'MPC vs PID Controllers in Multi-CPU Multi-Objective Real-Time Scheduling Systems', (MPC stands for an advanced control algorithm and PID stands for a basic control algorithm). Hashem introduces his project and his motivation for doing it. Sets out the problem and goes on to discuss experimentation, conclusions and future work in this area. |
Type Of Art | Film/Video/Animation |
Year Produced | 2012 |
Title | Does Scale Really Matter? |
Description | Linda Northrop is Director of the Software Engineering Institute (SEI)'s Researcg, Technology, & Systems Solutions (RTSS) Program. SEI is part of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh and their work on Ultra Large Scale (ULS) Systems is funded by the US Department of Defence. In this video Linda gives an overview of the research on ULS that SEI have conducted over the last seven years, the connection with LSCITS, and gives a personal reflection on the conclusions and possible future of the research. |
Type Of Art | Film/Video/Animation |
Year Produced | 2013 |
Title | From Research to Startup |
Description | In this video Ali Khajeh-Hosseini, Founder and Technical Lead of PlanForCloud, desribes how the research project he started during his time as an LSCITS PhD student turned into a start-up business for him which within one year was acquired by US based company RightScale. PlanForCloud are based in Edinburgh with 10 employees and rapidly expanding. |
Type Of Art | Film/Video/Animation |
Year Produced | 2013 |
Title | High Integrity Software Systems |
Description | Presentation by John McDermid, University of York, at the final LSCITS Symposium, York, 12th June 2013. This is a summary of work done in the area of High Integrity Software Systems and includes the conclusions of the research and recommendations. The LSCITS proposal identified 9 topics, 4 of which were funded: 'Agile High Integrity Processes', 'Incremental/Evolutionary Development', 'Safety of autonomic/adaptable systems', and 'Context independent dependability properties'. |
Type Of Art | Film/Video/Animation |
Year Produced | 2013 |
Title | Klaus Draeger |
Description | A Talking Head video - Klaus Draeger is a Post Doc and Research Assistant at the University of Oxford and talks about his work on Predictable Software Systems (PSS), part of the LSCITS Project. Klaus talks about research into verification methods for probabilistic systems and for LSCITS in particular for large-scale systems which take care of aspects such as: unreliable information or changes within the system. |
Type Of Art | Film/Video/Animation |
Year Produced | 2013 |
Title | Marta Kwiatkowska on Predictable Software Systems |
Description | Marta Kwiatkowska is a Professor of Computer Science at Oxford University and a Principle Investigator on the LSCITS Project. Marta is responsible for the research into Predictable Software Systems, a component of the LSCITS project. Here she discusses research on how to make software systems behave according to what we want them to do; that is to behave in accordance with some specification or requirement. There are two things that are new to her groups research and the first one is that they apply formal verification techniques, the second distinctive feature of her group's work is that they focus on probabilistic systems. In this video Marta goes into detail about these two approaches. |
Type Of Art | Film/Video/Animation |
Year Produced | 2013 |
Title | Model-Driven Engineering Metamodels |
Description | This talk by James Williams, an LSCITS PhD student at the University of York, describes a novel approach to the derivation of model-driven engineering (MDE) models using metaheuristic search, and it illustrates it using a specific engineering problem: that of deriving computer game characters with desirable properties.James explains how they apply the search to the underlying MDE metamodels, rather than the DSL directly, and as a result their approach is applicable to wide range of MDE models. James goes on to explain the implementation and the results of this approach. |
Type Of Art | Film/Video/Animation |
Year Produced | 2012 |
Title | Predictable Software Systems |
Description | Presentation by Marta Kwiatkowska, University of Oxford, at the LSCITS Symposium in York, 12th June 2013. We wanted to achieve predictable large scale complex systems, so this presentation discusses what we mean by that and how successful we have been in achieving our objectives, as well as lessons learnt. |
Type Of Art | Film/Video/Animation |
Year Produced | 2013 |
Title | Responsive Fair Scheduling |
Description | 'Responsive Fair Scheduling for an Engineering Design Grid' is presented by Andrew Burkimsher. Andrew is an LSCITS EngD student at University of York, sponsored by a large aircraft manufacturer. This presentation is mainly about middleware and why this is an LSCITS system. Andrew then discusses the scheduled approach he has adopted and the 2 scheduling policies proposed as a means to satisfy the scenario in this context. |
Type Of Art | Film/Video/Animation |
Year Produced | 2013 |
Title | Socio-Technical Systems Engineering |
Description | Presentation by Ian Sommerville, University of St Andrews, at the final LSCITS Symposium, York, 12th June 2013. Reflection on the Socio-technical Systems research. Taking into account how social networking has changed during the lifecycle of the LSCITS project. Conclusion was that we learned quite a lot and have built quite a good foundations for a discipline and discussed where do we go next. |
Type Of Art | Film/Video/Animation |
Year Produced | 2013 |
Title | Systemic Risks - a nuclear perspective |
Description | Robin Bloomfield is a Professor of System & Software Dependability at City University London and founder of Adelard LLP. In this video he talks about systemic risk and trust in complex based systems. Primarily from a nuclear perspective but he talks about the differences and similarities between the financial markets and the nuclear industry. He concludes that there are enormous differences yet both are enabled by high technology and have societal significant systemic risks. |
Type Of Art | Film/Video/Animation |
Year Produced | 2012 |
Title | The Disruptive Power of Big Data |
Description | Talk given by Professor Nigel Shadbolt of University of Southampton. Nigel has been working with Tim Berners Lee to open the Open Data Institute (ODI) This video talk explains the varieties of data - Broad Data not just Big Data. This variegated eco-system of data presents difficult challenges but also great opportunities. Using several examples; the earthquake in Haiti, the production of the data.gov.uk website, plus several more, Nigel explains how open data informs and directs evidence based technology. |
Type Of Art | Film/Video/Animation |
Year Produced | 2012 |
Title | The Relative Disagreement Model |
Description | Michael Meadows is an LSCITS PhD student at Bristol University researching opinion dynamics across large populations from the broader aspects of examining large-scale attacks on socio-technical systems. In the Relative Agreement Model (RA) we find three population convergences that can occur and are identified in this video as 'meeting in the middle', 'opposing extremes' (at one end or the other), and 'a single extreme'. In the Relative Disagreement Model we have to seed the RA nidek wutg a significant minority of extreme agents in order to exhibit the three convergences. These agents can only agree with or ignore each other. The really exciting thing is that the Relative Disagreement Model has so far been applied to just the field of terrorism which seems ludicrous as we are talking about opinion cascades which can affect everything (word of mouth can cause bank runs etc). Michael discusses the possible applications and how expert opinion can/should be rated. |
Type Of Art | Film/Video/Animation |
Year Produced | 2012 |
Title | Towards More Reliable LSCITS |
Description | In the final year of her doctorate at Oxford University, Lu Feng talks about her research and how it can help to make Large-Scale Complex IT Systems more reliable by using formal methods techniques. Lu uses 'cloud computing' and 'medical cyber-physical systems' as an example of why ensuring the safety and reliability of such systems becomes a very important yet challenging task as failures in these systems could lead to catastrophic consequences. Lu believe that formal methods provide a very good solution and goes on to explain formal verification, probabilistic model checking, compositional verification, and learning assumptions. She then gives an overview of her doctoral research and future work. |
Type Of Art | Film/Video/Animation |
Year Produced | 2012 |
Title | Ultra-Large-Scale Healthcare Systems (A Cyber-Social Systems Perspective) |
Description | Kevin Sullivan, professor of Computer Science at the University of Virginia, talks about the USA's highly fragmented healthcare system and how there is no national repository for data. In 2007 only 4% of physicians in the US used a comprehensive electronic file system. Under Obama, the Department of Health and Human Services was charged with implementing a national capability to transfer clinical information on patients around the country. Is it happening? Not really! Is it going to happen? Absolutely not clear! Kevin has been working with the Department of Health and Human Services in the US to try and understand how to remedy this situation. In this video he talks about the challenges, gives a case study, presents some research issues and discusses how to move forward. |
Type Of Art | Film/Video/Animation |
Year Produced | 2012 |
Description | This project was large, long-lasting, and ambitious. Its primary aim was to develop a community of practitioners with expertise in the various academic disciplines and types of industry practice that are relevant to understanding how to manage and maintain ultra-large scale IT systems -- for example, systems on the scale of the entire NHS IT system(s), or the interconnected IT systems that are involved in the entire global financial markets. This grant funded the research programme of what was known officially as the UK National Research & Training Initiative in the Science and Engineering of Large-Scale Complex IT Systems (LSCITS). The research programme funds (including additional donations from various industrial partners) paid for 45 person-years of postdoctoral research and approximately the same number of person-years of PhD student research. The LSCITS initiative included an associated Engineering Doctorate programme (funded from a separate EPSRC grant) that graduated an additional 40 doctoral-level engineers. In total approximately 60 people were involved in this project. They produced between them around 150 peer-reviewed academic publications, and also engaged in various deep interactions with industry (particularly the defence/aerospace and financial services sectors) and a substantial amount of advisory work for the UK Government and public-sector bodies such as the NHS Information Centre. Every one of the 150 publications relates to some aspect of what was discovered or developed through the research funded on this grant, and given the large number of people involved and the diverse body of work conducted from 2007 to 2013, there is no simple summary of the work of the project. Further details of the activities and findings of the project are available at the website listed below. |
Exploitation Route | Very many ways! |
Sectors | Aerospace, Defence and Marine,Communities and Social Services/Policy,Creative Economy,Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software),Financial Services, and Management Consultancy,Healthcare,Government, Democracy and Justice,Manufacturing, including Industrial Biotechology,Retail,Other |
URL | http://lscits.cs.bris.ac.uk/index.html |
Description | A five-year multi-university Initiative to establish a community of practice, and build capacity within the UK science-base, in the science and engineering of ultra-large scale IT systems, typically involving thousands of interacting computers and people. The LSCITS Initiative ran from 2007-2013, and involved leading academics, postdoctoral researchers, and doctoral students at the universities of Bristol, Leeds, Oxford, St Andrews, and York. As would be expected for such a large and long-lived project, the LSCITS Initiative has had impact in a variety of ways. Its academic impact can be judged by the fact that, to date, LSCITS-funded research has resulted in over 200 peer-reviewed academic publications, with more to follow, several of which are already frequently cited. The Initiative ran a successful series of public symposia and invitation-only workshops which were well attended by leading industrial practitioners and by internationally-leading academics external to the Initiative; in this way, it helped to provide thought-leadership and to shape professional practice in the design, development, and management of large-scale complex IT systems. A particularly fruitful international collaboration was established between the Initiative and the USA's Ultra-Large Scale Systems project led by the Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie Mellon University (the world's premier institute for software systems engineering). Political/policy impact was achieved by working with the UK Government's Home Office on a study of their internal IT systems issues, and also with the UK Government Office for Science's "Foresight" unit on a two-year study exploring the future of computer trading in the global financial markets, a project proposed by the Initiative's Director in which significant effort was spent on engaging with the drafting process for the EU's second Markets In Financial Instruments Directive, which when enacted will determine rules and regulations for financial-market trading across all European member states. Economic impact was achieved by the successful commercialization of research conducted at St Andrews into a start-up company, which was then rapidly acquired by a leading US cloud-computing company. Contribution Method: The peer-reviewed publications and reports helped shape opinion and promote further research. |
First Year Of Impact | 2010 |
Sector | Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software),Education,Financial Services, and Management Consultancy,Healthcare,Government, Democracy and Justice |
Impact Types | Societal,Policy & public services |
Description | LSCITS-RPv2: Large-Scale Complex IT Systems Initiative - Research Programme |
Policy Influence Type | Contribution to a national consultation/review |
Impact | A five-year multi-university Initiative to establish a community of practice, and build capacity within the UK science-base, in the science and engineering of ultra-large scale IT systems, typically involving thousands of interacting computers and people. Target Audience: Government Department |
Description | JAMES S. MCDONNELL FOUNDATION POST-DOCTORAL FELLOWSHIP AWARD |
Amount | £195,000 (GBP) |
Organisation | James S. McDonnell Foundation |
Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
Country | United States |
Start | 04/2013 |
End | 03/2015 |
Description | JAMES S. MCDONNELL FOUNDATION POST-DOCTORAL FELLOWSHIP AWARD |
Amount | £195,000 (GBP) |
Organisation | James S. McDonnell Foundation |
Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
Country | United States |
Start | 04/2013 |
End | 03/2015 |
Description | LSCITS-RPv2: Large-Scale Complex IT Systems Initiative - Research Programme (second tranche) |
Amount | £981,886 (GBP) |
Funding ID | EP/H042644/1 |
Organisation | Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) |
Sector | Public |
Country | United Kingdom |
Start | 10/2010 |
End | 09/2013 |
Description | LSCITS-RPv2: Large-Scale Complex IT Systems Initiative - Research Programme |
Organisation | Software Engineering Institute |
Country | United States |
Sector | Academic/University |
PI Contribution | A five-year multi-university Initiative to establish a community of practice, and build capacity within the UK science-base, in the science and engineering of ultra-large scale IT systems, typically involving thousands of interacting computers and people. |
Start Year | 2007 |
Title | Bristol Stock Exchange (BSE) |
Description | BSE is an open-source release of a minimal simulation of a limit order book (LOB) financial exhange populated by algorithmic trading systems, primarily intended for use in teaching. Bristol Stock Exchange is available for download at: https://github.com/davecliff/BristolStockExchange |
Type Of Technology | Software |
Year Produced | 2012 |
Open Source License? | Yes |
Impact | Has been used in teaching automated stock-market trading to c. 100 masters-level students every year 2012/2013/2014, so around 300 students to dat. |
URL | https://github.com/davecliff/BristolStockExchange |
Title | CLOUDMONITOR |
Description | CloudMonitor was built by James Smith, LSCITS PhD student, and is a software utility that is capable of .95% accurate power predictions from monitoring resource consumption of workloads, after a "training phase" in which a dynamic power model is developed. CloudMonitor is available for download from github at: https://github.com/jws7/CloudMonitor |
Type Of Technology | Software |
Year Produced | 2011 |
URL | https://github.com/jws7/CloudMonitor |
Title | ExPo: The Exchange Portal |
Description | ExPo: The Exchange Portal, is an online financial trading exchange platform designed to run controlled scientific trading experiments between human traders and automated trader robots. Designed for research in behavioural economics and computerised trading, this Ruby on Rails application enables humans and automated trading algorithms to trade stock in an online marketplace. ExPo includes C and Ruby APIs for automated robot traders, and a suite of reference traders implemented in C. ExPo has been used as a teaching platform and a research platform> Download and latest repository code is available from: http://sourceforge.net/projects/exchangeportal/ |
Type Of Technology | Software |
Year Produced | 2011 |
URL | http://sourceforge.net/projects/exchangeportal/ |
Title | OpEx (Open Exchange) |
Description | Can be briefly described as "The open source Algorithmic Trading System". OpEx is an application suite that includes the main building blocks of commercial electronic trading systems. OpEx is available to download from Sourceforge. |
Type Of Technology | Software |
Year Produced | 2012 |
Open Source License? | Yes |
Impact | Thus far, 936 downloads worldwide since release. 15% USA; 15%UK; 12%China; 7%India; 7%Germany; 4%Russia; 4%Spain; 36%RestOfWorld. |
URL | http://sourceforge.net/projects/open-exchange/ |
Title | The Change Point detecting Subspace Tracker (CDST) algorithm |
Description | The CDST algorithm was synthesised and developed by Chris Musselle, PhD student at University of Bristol, for the purpose of anomaly detection across multiple data streams. The algorithm tracks the covariance between all data streams through a reduced respresentation which is then updated incrementally with each time step. Preliminary results show the algorithm to be fast and effective at flagging up points where there is a change is the variance or covariance of the data. A demo of the prototype algorithm is available at: https//github.com/MrKriss/CDST-demo |
Type Of Technology | Software |
Year Produced | 2012 |
URL | https://github.com/MrKriss/CDST-demo |
Description | LSCITS |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A magazine, newsletter or online publication |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | |
Results and Impact | Informational project website detailing project aims and objectives, plus outcomes, video library, educational material, open-source tools developed on the project for public download. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2007 |