Information systems challenges for through-life engineering

Information technologies hold great promise in achieving reduction in through-life support costs for long-lived complex artefacts such as aircraft and ships, and may allow very much improved assessment of asset condition, but in order for these to be achieved a number of technical and socio-technical challenges have to be overcome. Based on a perspective gained in the EPSRC Knowledge and Information Management Through-Life Grand Challenge project this paper gives an over view of these challenges, of recent research achievement and of areas where further research is needed. In particular, it notes that it is important to identify what information needs to be captured through the life of the artefact and how the information may be organised and sustained over long timescales. Important standards are reviewed, as are emerging developments such as classification systems and ontologies for organisation and the use of lightweight representations and annotation. Finally, socio-technical challenges including data accuracy and quality issues, security and privacy and the latency in multi-faceted information systems are reviewed.