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Panel
Collaborative engineering based on Web

at EMMSEC 97

European Multimedia,
Microprocessor Systems and
Electronic Commerce

Conference and Exhibition

New technology - new business

Panelists:

Wojciech Cellary, Dept. of Information Technology, University of Economics at Poznan, Poland
Alexander Smirnov, Institute of Informatics and Automation, Russian Academy of Sciences, St.-Petersburg, Russia
Xavier Warzee, Thomson-CSF Optronique, France
John Willis, FTL Systems Ltd, UK

Panel moderator and organizer: Adam Pawlak, BENEFIT

Keywords: information society, Internet-based collaborative engineering, WWW technologies, global engineering networks, tools over the Internet, virtual design environments, digital engineering libraries, networks, pan-European collaboration, standards.

A rapid development of Internet-based technologies enabling global collaboration of engineering teams, with increasing easiness of accessing any kind of design information through WWW will dramatically change engineering environments.

The envisioned "virtual design environments" in which, a designer will be able to configure his/her set of tools suiting at best his/her engineering tasks will be soon available to the engineers, either through Inter- or Intra-net. The work within virtual design environments will be much easier to be shared. Powerful, Web-based services for collaborative engineering will enable a team work for wide geographically distributed group members. Before global engineering networks become a reality, many problems related to representation of engineering knowledge, intelligent search and on-line access to libraries, protection of intellectual properties, security will have to be solved.

This technological breakthrough creates a special situation in Europe where a few years after a dramatic changes in the political scene, a special momentum exists for consolidation of pan-European engineering and research efforts.

In order to discuss new technologies for collaborative engineering in the context of pan-European co-operation, a panel will be organised at the OMI Conf. in Florence, 3-5 Nov. 1997. This year's OMI conference theme: "EMMSEC 97 European Multimedia, Microprocessor Systems and Electronic Commerce - New technology - new business" is particularly well suiting the objectives of the panel proposed below in more detail.

Objectives of the panel:

• clarify the pan-European scenario of the Internet infrastructure adequate for collaborative engineering; investigate those Web characteristics which make it that attractive for collaborative engineering, and the new sorts of engineering-oriented, added value services which can be made available on Web;
• discuss standards scenario for collaborative engineering based on Web: what's available, where are the most evident needs; identify and discuss relevant intellectual properties protection problems in general, and in the domain of design representations in particular;
• identify the first successful examples of pan-European collaborative engineering based on Internet; envision short and long term development, and discuss whether the awareness about the potential of the new technologies for collaborative engineering is equally shared among the EU and CEE partners, look for the most promising domains of collaborative engineering at the pan-European level.

Comments mail to AdamPawlak@compuserve.com

August 1997