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INTPART-International Partnerships for Excellent Education and Research

DSYNE: Digital System Requirements for Natural Resources Engineering

Alternative title: DSYNE: Digitale systemkrav for ingeniørarbeid i industrier som utvinner naturressurser

Awarded: NOK 3.4 mill.

Digitalization offers a new way of working that can improve efficiency and reduce costs. However, digitalization of the design and operation of plants needs a digital representation of requirements. DSYNE is a network of computer scientists and system engineers in Norway, USA and Brazil. They have been working on ways to digitalize requirements and exploit the power of computing in engineering and running plants like oil platforms, power stations, smelters and mines. International work is needed to avoid individual countries building their own, inconsistent ways of working with requirements. DSYNE provides resources for international collaboration and building understanding. The project finances three workshops, researcher exchanges and the development on common courses in Digital Requirements in System Engineering. A working seminar was held in Rio de Janeiro in November 2022. A PhD student from UFES has worked with UiO and USN in 2023. We will conclude the project with a seminar in Oslo in spring 2024.

DSYNE is a project to build an international research, education and innovation network in digital requirements management in engineering. This process is a vital, but very expensive part of the capital projects that are used to build todays oil platforms, energy plants, infrastructure and processing facilities. The state of the art is a process where operating companies, engineering firms and equipment suppliers exchange paper or unstructured documents containing requirements and their verification results. This costs money and reduces the quality of engineering. Current research has shown that it is possible to use semantic technologies to describe requirements in a truly digital way, so that they can be shared in databases and used for automated reasoning and validation. This has the potential to change the way requirements are managed and transmitted in the natural resources industry. However, if this to happen, we need to (1) build international awareness of these methods, (2) build knowledge and skills in this technology and methods, both in computer scientists and engineers and (3) bring together domain knowledge in engineering with computer science to create useable, scalable tools for managing requirements. The DSYNE network is built around three hubs in the world natural resources industries: Oslo, Houston and Rio de Janeiro. It brings together leading schools in computer science and systems engineering, with complementary research and educational profiles, to build a course in digital requirements for MSc level training and continuing education. The work is supported by operating and engineering companies, who will participate in DSYNES workshops at their own expense. The project is also coordinated with relevant branch organizations and clusters in Brazil, USA and Norway.The work builds on the SIRIUS SFI at the University of Oslo and the Centre for Systems Engineering at USN.

Funding scheme:

INTPART-International Partnerships for Excellent Education and Research