News

Complex systems are an integral part of our constructed world. As we come to rely increasingly on these systems for all aspects of our lives it would be reasonable if we could claim a solid understanding as to how these can be specified, constructed and controlled. With few exceptions this is not possible. Large systems projects fail in both public and private sectors. At the same time, these projects play expanding roles in government and commercial strategy, demanding budgets to match.

A fundamental problem in understanding, designing and managing real-world complex systems is the need to work fluidly across disciplines. Increasing academic specialisation has tended to work against this, something that is often reflected in industrial research and development.

Combining disciplines as diverse as psychology, mathematics and engineering is difficult. Factors such as language, funding models, publication practices and problem sets all mitigate against the necessary mixture of disciplines coming together to improve our understanding of complex systems, their applications and their limitations.

We need to do something about this. Whether motivated by a desire to develop cost effective, repeatable complex systems, to ground academic research, to seek out new problems or just research funding, there is a need to bring disciplines together in a constructive and creative way.

A group of academic and industrial organisations have recognised the need for a combination of pre-competitive research, consortium brokerage, standards and publication in this area. Grounding these problems in the area of services research - prime examples of large, complex and economically significant systems makes both industrial and academic sense. The Centre for Systems and Services Sciences (CS3) has been created specifically to address the issues.

June 14th 2006: Call for Participation, 1st Technical Meeting of CS3, Grenoble, September 26-28 2006 announced.

Directions to HP Site in Grenoble here

By car - distance from Grenoble:
Lyon: 100 km
Geneva: 145 km
Torino: 240 km
Nice: 330 km
Paris: 570 km
Barcelona: 625 km

Agenda

Tuesday 26th September informal meeting at Park Hotel around 8pm

Wednesday 27th September meeting at HP Site in Grenoble map 09:15 - 18:00

Wednesday 27th September Dinner at La Corne d'Or 19:30hrs

Thursday 28th September meeting at HP SIte in Grenoble map 09:15 - 18:00

Friday 29th September NESSI WG - HP Site Grenoble

Schedule

June 8th 2006: At the Networked European Software and Services Initiative (NESSI) General Assembly in Brussels, the formation of a working group in Services Sciences and Systems Engineering, supported by partners from CS3 is announced. The first working group meeting will be held in Brussels on July 18th 2006. For further details contact Corinna Schulze.

May 18th-19th 2006: Grand Challenges in Services Meeting held at the Said Business School, Oxford UK with backing from the UK ESRC-EPSRC Advanced Institute of Management.

April 18th 2006: Workshop on Education for Service Innovation held in Washington DC, hosted by the US National Science Foundation, US Department of Commerce, and IBM Research.