An architectural framework for a distributed process control information system

This paper describes an architectural framework for constructing a distributed intelligent information system for monitoring and control of operations in the process industries. Many researchers had reportedly implemented data integration systems that combine two or more monitoring and control techniques, and applied the system to various domains in the process industries. However, the diverse applications have not resulted in a set of clear guidelines on how to combine the techniques together. Therefore, the architectural framework proposed in this paper aims to provide guidelines on how information resources can be integrated. The information obtained from multiple techniques, data sources, and users can be utilized and shared within an integrated environment. In this environment, information is gathered, integrated and analyzed with the help of a knowledge base embedded with reasoning capabilities. Based on the proposed architectural framework, a distributed information system can provide corroborations and interactions among data sources and users, or among two or more monitoring and control techniques. In this framework, there are three main modules including a user and input/output interface module, a distributed intelligent information system module and a data processing module.