INNOVATIVE SCADA TEST BED INFRASTRUCTURE FOR ENGINEERING EDUCATION AND RESEARCH

Abstract

In the context of growing interest from students but also from industrial companies for a solid preparation in the field of industrial information systems with applications in the energy field, extractive industry, chemical plants and automotive systems, universities have to keep up with this demand and, appropiate resources at hand, should stay ahead of the curve in offering facilities that enable competitive education. The paper introduces the development and implementation of a modern medium-scale laboratory concept in support of engineering education and research in the field of SCADA systems. The main distance process monitoring and control concepts are discussed, along with practical skills for developing applications for solving real-world projects as elements of efficient knowledge transfer. The key infrastructure levels are described: field equipment level, remote monitoring and human machine interface level, engineering/development level, communication and network level and IT backbone. We emphasize the integration of the common platform, achieved by leveraging standard based approaches which allow interconnection of hardware and software from different manufacturers. Modern intelligent and software-intensive industrial solutions require a systems perspective with can only be grasped with applied learning and up-to-date teaching methods. By developing a robust IT infrastructure architecture, on-line learning as well as a remote laboratory approach are also enabled. The laboratory was developed within the Industrial Information Systems group at the Department of Automatic Control and Industrial Informatics, UPB, and it is envisioned that, by means of standardized interfaces, the federation of such test bed with similar developments from academia and industry will be opened up.