Mission and objectives
The objective of the Renewed Task Group is further development and refinement of the advanced mathematical toolkit developed by the TG members in 2019-2021 and its application to the problem area of resilience of sociotechnological systems (STSs) and critical infrastructures (CIs) including segments (energy, industrial production, information, banking & finance, transportation, etc.) that are affected by various distributed destructive impacts exacerbated by cascading effects. The refinement is required for adequate modelling and decision making regarding conditions caused by extreme events when management of an STS is constrained to use extra-large volumes of imperfect data, the primary items of which are incomplete and inconsistent. So the main task is to develop mathematical and knowledge engineering tools for operating with low-quality Big Data and, nevertheless, providing rational solution of complex Systems Analysis problems relating resilience of STSs and CIs.
Significance
First of all, a refined mathematical toolkit can be used by researchers and systems designers as a common language for cooperative work on sophisticated problems of the global Digital Economy (DE), especially optimal planning and online scheduling in various STS and CI clusters partly destroyed by distributed impacts. Thus, Technologies and Good Practice for Data-Intensive Science would be enabled.
Second, a refined mathematical toolkit, being strongly interconnected with Big Data and Knowledge Engineering, will integrate best features with experienced mathematics and algorithmics of classic operations research, thus Breaking Down Silos which are inherent to their mutually isolated applications. Also Advancing Interoperability Through Cross-Domain Exemplary Case Studies would be achieved by application of the unified mathematical toolkit to representation and exploration of STSs, emerging segments of heterogeneous CIs usually described by hardly interconnected tools.
Finally, a refined mathematical toolkit will be extremely useful in application to the COVID-19 pandemic about which counteraction and neutralization needs permanent data fusion in the circumstances when most information about virus propagation and impact on human organisms is unreliable, incomplete and inconsistent.
Impact
The most advanced results obtained by the Renewed Task Group would be published as articles in the CODATA Data Science Journal https://www.codata.org/dsj or other high-level refereed Journals from the Web of Science and Scopus core collections. Also, a monograph consisting of workshop procdings, describing all aspects of the developed mathematical toolkit, would be prepared for publication.
Along with theoretical results there will be designed case study models of some available fragments of the interconnected critical infrastructures. These models will demonstrate capabilities of the developed mathematical toolkit, providing practically valuable assessment of the resilience/vulnerability to various impacts of sociotechnological systems, operating upon selected fragments. These kinds of models would be prepared for publication as a report to CODATA.
Planned activities and outputs for 2021-2023
It is planned to organize two TG webinars: in April 2022 (“Big Data and Knowledge Engineering: Extending the mathematical background of Systems Analysis”), and in October 2022 (“Imperfect Data and Systems Analysis”). The second TG Workshop “Big Data and Systems Analysis” is planned to be held in May 2023 at the Geophysical Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia, or virtually. Publication of the Workshop Proceedings by the world’s largest Online Open Access publisher Intech Open is planned in 2023. Some more webinars, if necessary, would be organized, and a TG blog would be established on Internet for interaction between TG members as well as other scholars interested in the TG work and results.
Check also the Past Achievements of the Task Group.
Contacts
Prof. Fred Roberts (USA), director of Command, Control and Interoperability Center for Advanced Data Analysis (CCICADA), emeritus director of Center for Discrete Mathematics and Theoretical Computer Science (DIMACS), Rutgers University, froberts[at]dimacs.rutgers.edu
Prof. Igor Sheremet (Russia), deputy director for science of Russian Foundation for Basic Research, member of the Russia CODATA National Committee, sheremet[at]rfbr.ru
The TG Secretary
Dr. Tatiana Khromova, distinguished scholar, Institute of Geography, Russian Academy of Sciences, Russia, tkhromova[at]gmail.com