General presentation
The aim of OPUS – Open source Platform for Uncertainty treatment in Simulation – project is to create and sustain an activity around Generic Uncertainty Treatments by building and maintaining an Integrated Open Source Platform.
A growing number of industrial risk studies do include some form of treatment of the numerous sources of uncertainties in order to provide reliable results. Appropriate uncertainty management allows for system design optimisation leading to natural and industrial risk control, financial performance improvement or forecast. Basically, whatever the context is, uncertainty awareness empowers stakeholders to take the best from the available information, knowledge and models at any decision making point.
While many approaches, typically specific and problem driven, had been imagined and developed since late 90th by various industries ranging from Defence to Medical, to Energy, ever widening spectrum of possible applications yielded a know-how consolidation economically sensible.
Meanwhile, since several years the industry observes a move to the multi-physics and multi-scales simulation motivated by the cost control – reducing or replacing the reliance on tests – for the complex systems’ design or performance assessment. All this makes generic uncertainty treatment, as opposed to domain specific efforts, a cornerstone for rapid industrial progress.
Hence nowadays several major partnerships (ESREDA, MUCM , SAMSI, IMdR) have launched ambitious works to capitalise on uncertainty treatments into generic guides that would meet virtually any industrial need. It aims at designing a common template to be followed as well as specific guidelines to methodology that might best fit the particular case typically according to the data and experts information availability, model complexity and so on.
In order to reach a broad stakeholder community ranging from physicists to company managers with uncertainty awareness and management capacity an essential step – the OPUS project target – is to create a genuinely generic and comprehensive software platform. OPUS capitalises on the most advanced conceptual and guidelines work into an Open Source, however industrialised and fully serviced software product.
OPUS has gathered the specialists from all relevant fields:
- Ecole Centrale de Paris (ECP), SUPELEC – industry oriented uncertainty research
- INRIA - Host of Scilab Consortium. Among other INRIA projects and major advances, Scilab is a renowned French Open Source Software in scientific computing
- Joseph Fourier University and Paris VII University – applied mathematicians with connections to R and Scilab/Octave – recognised Open Source Software
- CEA, EADS, EDF and Dassault Aviation – leading players in building an industrial consensus over the Generic Uncertainty Treatment Guidelines for industrial use (ESREDA, EHPOC)
- SOFTIA – French start up company with strong records of providing the large companies with services around Open Source solutions
Therefore OPUS project leverages much greater know-how and resources than reflected by the project balance sheet. The synergy of partner experiences provides OPUS with critical weight to launch a Generic Open Source Uncertainty Treatment Platform and create a sustainable dynamic to ensure its durability.
OPUS promotes the transparency in the uncertainty treatment approaches it adopts. Therefore OPUS platform is kept open to scrutiny and potential critics that lead to upgrade and ensure the progress.
OPUS contributes to the emerging Open Source community in the Complex System Development as platform respects current standards and ensures the interoperability with existing and emerging High Performance Simulation tools. Indeed OPUS partnership ensures the close cooperation with other major Open Source projects in the field of Complex System Development (EHPOC, SCILAB, SCOS, TER@TEC) as it is packed with active players in these projects.
OPUS objectives in brief
The existence in France of a Generic Integrated Uncertainty Treatment Platform for Simulation and Design of Complex Systems.
That allows for:
- Uncertainty aware modelling with cutting edge tools
- Sustainable Dynamic in the Uncertainty Treatment Field
Maintain the cutting edge French know-how in industry oriented uncertainty research That promotes the Open Source Software for High Performance Modelling and Complex System conception.
That establishes France as a major hub in the international Industrial Open Source Software map.
Keywords: Complex Systems, High Performance Simulation, Platform, Open Source, Uncertainty Treatments
