WO2012041342A1

WO2012041342A1 - Apparatus and method for linking data

Info

Publication number: WO2012041342A1
Application number: PCT/EP2010/005964
Authority: WO
Inventors: Jochen FÄHNLEIN; Andreas MÜLLER
Original assignee: Siemens Aktiengesellschaft
Priority date: 2010-09-30
Filing date: 2010-09-30
Publication date: 2012-04-05

Abstract

The invention describes an apparatus and a method which make it possible to link various items of data via an installation of previously separate information systems, in particular in the automation environment. The newly acquired information tuples produced in this manner can in turn be made available to the (three) already known information systems in order to provide the additional information in the respective representations of the GIS, the SCADA system or the like. This is particularly advantageous for carrying out service work in the installation, for example.

Description

description

Device and method for linking data Field of the invention

In their plant diagrams, control systems and B & B (Operator Control and Monitoring) systems, hereinafter referred to as control / B & B systems or monitoring control systems (SCADA, Super- vision Control and Data Acquisition, systems), are concurrently focused on each one From the point of view of a plant operator, the purpose to be fulfilled also implicitly informs about the topology of the respective monitored plant or plant section. Thus, on an image, by means of so-called human machine interface

(HMI) representations, for example, that a switch is present in a rail section whose current point position is displayed for operation and control.

At the same time, this image also contains the schematic information about the spatial arrangement and relationship between the individual track elements and the connecting turnout. Likewise, the infrastructure of pipelines (e.g., oil, gas) can be represented. A possible mapping using HMI

Representatives can be the visualization of a valve including a pressure sensor between two pipeline elements.

SCADA systems allow you to display the relevant process values for operation and control. This knowledge can now z. B. also be useful for service technicians, since they need to perform their tasks, knowledge of the structure and operation of each facility. However, since in SCADA systems, the design of plant images in shape, color and arrangement can be designed individually in principle, although implicitly, at least the knowledge about the spatial structure of the plant is not directly usable, but

CONFIRMATION COPY can at most give an assistance. The exact knowledge must be taken from other sources, eg. B. plant plans, to be obtained separately, with an information technology connection between the two sources of information due to different applications only indirectly (eg., About equipment indicator AKZ) does not exist, for example, if the service technician the system plans are available in a separate system.

If the service technician would like to receive further information about the functioning of the system, he must resort to a further source of information, since this information too is not available in the monitoring control system.

In application fields such as infrastructure or energy supply, however, such exact knowledge of plant topologies is often already available in the form of standardized, directly processable geographic information system (GIS) data. A service technician can use such information from a GIS to gain accurate knowledge of the physical structure of a facility. At the same time, however, it lacks the service-relevant data from the system available in the control / B & B system with its system images.

Functional knowledge as well as semantic knowledge about the structure of a plant, which can provide information about mechanical components of a plant, is also available in standardized, directly processable formats, but currently has no defined relation to the information stored in monitoring control systems. However, this semantic knowledge is a central aspect in the performance of service tasks and has an impact on the quality of maintenance. State of the art

With a control / B & B system (SCADA) or a system based on it as a central instance in plant monitoring, it is currently not possible to use the information available there to provide information about spatial structures, functionality and other semantic information that is also important to service technicians Provide information at the same time. A service technician must first combine and summarize information that is necessary for his activity, which is distributed in various systems, which in addition to the loss of time represents a potential source of misinterpretation.

There are already approaches to combine SCADA systems and GIS, as well semantic information can be stored on the GIS side. There is currently no generic, universally usable connection between SCADA, GIS and semantic information management.

Existing links from SCADA and GIS concern the OPC communication between them ("GIS Integration with SCADA, DMS & AMR in Electrical Utility.", Uday D. Kaie, Rajesh Lad., Http://www.gisdevelopment.net/patent/mapindia / 2006 / energ y / mi06ene_184.htm), as well as the linking of the same elements in the respective systems by "tags".

In addition, it is already possible to store semantic information in a GIS to a limited extent.

GIS data represents real objects. These are described by attributes such as "width" or "length". In addition to the purely spatial attributes, further spatially independent data can be stored. This is z. B. possible to deposit the owner of a property. The object of the invention is to provide a method and a device which does not have the abovementioned disadvantages.

Presentation of the invention

This object is achieved by a device according to claim 1 and a method according to claim 8.

Claimed is a device for linking information regarding an automation system with means for storing combinations of linked information consisting of first information from the monitoring control system concerning the components of the automation plant and their operation, second information regarding the topology of the automation system and third others , in particular semantic information and means to provide the linked information. The method for providing information regarding an automation system comprises the following steps:

In a first step, first information from the monitoring control system regarding the components of the automation system and their operation are selected, in a second step, second information relating to the topology of the automation system are assigned and in a third step, further information is assigned and

the information thus linked is stored and made available in an appropriate form.

Particularly advantageous embodiments of the subject invention are specified in the subclaims. The three involved system types monitoring control system

SCADA, Geolnformation System GIS and semantic informati- onsmanagement have properties that are advantageous for mutual information access.

• Monitoring control systems SCADA:

In plant pictures in the operating unit of the monitoring

Control system Human-Machine Interface (HMI) representations of the real plant components are presented. In this case, several such HMI representations of different components can be present (for example on a picture). The same component can also be displayed on several images, for example in different forms. This results in an n: m relationship between the configured pictures and the HMI representations displayed on them within a SCADA system. Both the images and the HMI representations contained can be individually identified within the context they embed (SCADA system / project or image).

• Geographic Information Systems GIS:

Individual GIS representations of objects of the real world

(eg system components) are mapped as "features" in true-to-scale representations (analogous to cards) and are also clearly identifiable. This makes it possible to selectively access related spatial information of real objects, such. As position and dimensions, access and further process. Since a GIS can typically manage multiple maps and real objects can be listed on multiple maps, an n: m relationship may result.

• Semantic Information Management SIM:

In principle, any further information on plant components can be modeled, stored, linked and evaluated. Advantageously, information about the structure of components or relationships with other components are stored. Such information units as component representatives can also be uniquely identified.

In a system landscape consisting of these three systems or system types, each representation of a plant component in the respective system is identified. In an advantageous embodiment, these identifications are combined in a 3-tuple, with which ternary relationships between HMI representations, GIS representations and the SIM representatives in information management are defined.

The following rules apply:

1) In order to identify a component representative belonging to a real component in a semantic information system, it is deposited under which identifications the corresponding GIS representations and in the SCADA system their HMI representations can be found.

2) If a component is represented in several SCADA images, or vice versa, multiple components in one

SCADA image, a tuple is created for each use and the respective SCADA identification is entered. This represents the 1: n relationship between a real plant component and its HMI representatives.

3) If a component is used in several cards on the GIS side, a single identification is still sufficient for this because the required spatial information is present in all cards and only the respective representation differs in terms of scale, etc. This causes a relationship between a feature and the real component. 4) If there is no representative in one of the participating systems for a plant component, then its entry in the tuple is marked as empty.

5) If an existing link (mapping) is rejected, all dependent relationships (1: n) are also discarded. Description of the preferred embodiments

Brief description of the drawings

In the following the invention will be explained with reference to exemplary embodiments. Show

FIG. 1 is an overview diagram,

FIG. 2 shows an example of a procedure with SMI,

FIG. 3 a representation of the monitoring control system,

Figure 4 is an illustration of the geographic information system and

FIG. 5 shows a further representation with semantic information.

FIG. 1 shows an overview diagram of the individual components and their relationships with one another. The at least three systems SCADA 11, GIS 12, SIM 13 exist side by side.

Each of them has access to a central component, ap- ping component 14. This is associated with a memory area, tuple store 15, in which the information combined according to the invention is stored. Using the mapping component, the respective systems can access the combined information independently of each other.

For a real component K _rea i which is represented in the SCADA system on three images (Bi, B ₂ , B ₃ ), in the GIS material on a map (Mi) and in the semantic information management as an individual Ii, I ₂ results By way of example, the following functional tuple image for the respective identifications (Table 1, ID is to be understood as a function):

Table I-Typical ID tuples The identifications thus generated are summarized outside (for example, in an intermediate application, so-called middleware) and stored in a suitable memory. For this purpose, a software component ("mapping component") is used which, as a central interface, enables the individual subsystems to acquire, access, persist and modify the tuples.

With the help of the system-external connection of the different component representations, it is now advantageously made possible to connect different systems or system types which deal with the same real situation under different aspects. Each participating system can thus find out the corresponding representations in the other systems.

Furthermore, the approach is not limited to the abovementioned system types alone: With the aid of the mapping component, an entire system can still be dynamically extended by new systems with reference to the respectively considered real conditions even after it has been put into operation.

This opens up powerful possibilities for integrative use of system-externally known information on the components and functions that are in each case represented internally, especially for monitoring control systems. Of course, this path also applies to the other systems. For example, a GIS can expand its visualization with semantically enriched SCADA information, just as an ontology browser for semantic information management can simultaneously present the spatial conditions of real components and their SCADA-relevant information to the user.

Therefore, connections between or to the individual systems do not require any explicit consideration of the respective concrete characteristics of the systems and are independent of the manufacturer. Rather, this approach is a flexible Structure which, even in the event of partial failure (eg when one system is discontinued), can ensure an exchange of information between the other systems. The representatives represented in a surveillance control system (SCADA, 11) are merely images without semantic information and spatial context. In order nevertheless to be able to add and to be able to use this missing information for a selected image, a mapping rule must be created. An example is given below which represents the sequence diagram from FIG. 2 as a possible program sequence.

The first program steps describe the call of the editor 201, with verification of a connection 202, associated error handling 211, 212, 213.

In the example under consideration, this is a tank 301, which is shown on the monitoring control system side in FIG. 3, here with an associated connection 303 to an overall system, which is not shown in FIG. Since this graphic does not provide (mechanically) useable information, a link to the semantic and spatial (geospatial) information must first be created.

From the associated GIS model 12, the real object 301, which is to represent the image, is selected, see FIG. The mapping component provides the user with a visual representation of the GIS data, along with the selection of a feature 222 representing the real object. Enclosed are the semantic data available for GIS on the short description of the selected object. If no GIS information providing system can be reached, this step is skipped; A visual highlighting of an image displayed in the SCADA system in the real, spatial representation is therefore not possible. In order to be able to exploit the entire semantic spectrum, the associated semantic information instance (also called individual) 13 is selected from an ontology, shown in FIG. 5. On the basis of this referencing, it is then possible to obtain arbitrary information, such as information. For example, the manufacturer of this product, its service hotline, the structure of the product within a system, its electrical connections to other components, etc., are determined.

This results in the following content of the tuple store 15, where in this example the associations between the individual individuals ("has _..." relationships) are resolved by means of separate tables in order to enable an n: m relationship. The simplified tabular representation of Table 1 is shown in more detail in Tables 2 to 7 and supplemented with the data from the program flow (Figure 3, 4 and 5).

Table 2: HmiObject

Table 3: HmiObject_has_GisObject The number in the field Gisld allows a link to a GIS service, which can visually highlight the feature with the ID 368 or provide geospatial data for it.

Table 4: GisObject

Table 5: GisObject has Semanticindividual

Table 6: Semanticindividual

Table 7: HmiObj ect_has_Semanticlndividual

Claims

claims

Device for linking information (mapping component) concerning components of an automation system

with means for storing (tuple store) combinations of linked information consisting of

first information from the monitoring control system concerning the components of the automation system and their functioning (SCADA),

second information concerning the topology of the automation system (GIS) and

third additional information (SIM) and

Means to provide the linked information.

Device according to claim 1, characterized in that

the storage of the linked information by means of 3-tuple takes place.

Device according to one of the preceding claims, characterized in that

the linked information is stored in tables.

Device according to one of the preceding claims, characterized in that

the linked information is provided to the monitoring control system (SCADA) for the implementation of a graphical representation (11) enriched with the associated second (GIS) and / or third information (SIM). 5. Device according to one of the preceding claims 1 to 3, characterized in that the linked information is provided to the Geolformation System (GIS) for the implementation of a graphical representation (12) enriched with the associated first (SCADA) and / or third information (SI).

Device according to one of the preceding claims 1 to 3, characterized in that

the linked information is made available to the semantic information management (SIM) for the implementation of a graphical representation (13) enriched with the associated first (SCADA) and / or second information (GIS).

Device according to one of the preceding claims, characterized in that

fourth additional information can be linked.

Method for providing information (226) relating to components of an automation system, wherein first information from the monitoring control system relating to the components of the automation system and their mode of operation (SCADA) are selected (214), to be assigned to second information relating to the topology of the automation system (GIS) ( 221) and

third additional information (SIM) are assigned (223) and

the information thus linked is stored and made available.

Method according to claim 8, characterized in that

the link information is stored as a 3-tuple.

10. The method according to any one of the claims 8 or 9, characterized in that

the linked information is stored in tabular form.

11. The method according to any one of the claims 8 to 10, characterized in that

the linked information is retrieved from the control system (SCADA) and

is converted into a graphical representation, enriched with the associated second (GIS) and / or third information (SIM).

12. The method according to any one of the preceding claims 8 to 10, characterized in that

the linked information is retrieved from the Geolnformationssystem (GIS) and converted into a graphical representation (12), enriched with the associated first (SCADA) and / or third information (SIM).

13. The method according to any one of the preceding claims 8 to 10, characterized in that

the linked information is retrieved from the semantic information management (SIM) and converted into a graphical representation (13) enriched with the associated first (SCADA) and / or second information (GIS).