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System knowledge and reasoning mechanisms are essential means for intellectualization of cyber-physical systems (CPSs). As enablers of system intelligence, they make such systems able to solve application problems and to maintain their efficient operation. Normally, system intelligence has a human-created initial part and a system-produced (extending) part, called synthetic system intelligence (SSI). This position paper claims that SSI can be converted to a new industrial asset and utilized as such. Unfortunately, no overall theory of SSI exists and its conceptual framework, management strategy, and computational methodologies are still in a premature stage. This is the main reason why no significant progress has been achieved in this field, contrary to the latent potentials. This paper intends to contribute to: (i) understanding the nature and fundamentals of SSI, (ii) systematizing the elicitation and transfer of SSI, (iii) exploration of analogical approaches to utilization of SSI, and (iv) road-mapping and scenario development for the exploitation of SSI as an industrial asset. First, the state of the art is surveyed and the major findings are presented. Then, four families of analogical approaches to SSI transfer are analyzed. These are: (i) knowledge transfer based on repositories, (ii) transfer among agents, (iii) transfer of learning resources, and (iv) transfer by emerging approaches. A procedural framework is proposed that identifies the generic functionalities needed for a quasi-autonomous handling of SSI as an industrial asset. The last section casts light on some important open issues and necessary follow-up research and development activities.

This paper presents the findings of a bibliometric survey over the past 25 years of the Journal of Integrated Design & Process Science (JIDPS), which is the flagship publication forum of the Society of Design and Process Science (SDPS). The discussion is of a retrospective, statistical, and narrative nature. The goal of the survey was not only to expose the facts concerning publication statistics, but also to get an insight in the nature of the scientific contribution of the journal as a whole and to identify the target applications domains of the published papers. The paper lets the facts speak for themselves and offers the findings for further evaluation and road-mapping by the concerned stakeholders.

As the nature of systems changes, systems thinking must also change. A currently happening strong change is proliferation of highly intellectualized and socially deeply embedded engineered systems, which raise many novel and crucial technological, managerial, social, organizational, business, environmental, human, and so forth, issues. Considering the influences of this change, it is argued that there is a need for prognostic systems thinking (PST) that considers not only the observable manifestation of systems, but also the trends of their overall development. The reported research is based on a comprehensive literature study and concept relationship analysis. Its goal was deriving a comprehensive set of investigational concerns based on an extended conceptual framework. Rendered as a semantic network, this conceptual framework rests on a set of foundational concepts (semantically interconnected pillars). The paper (i) explains the reasons of the abovementioned need, (ii) identifies the pillars of contemporary analytic systems thinking as well as a set of up-and-coming new pillars, (iii) presents a first iteration of the novel conceptual framework, (iv) discusses the proposed investigation concerns for prognostic systemic analysis, and (iv) casts light on their implications with regard to PST. Furthermore, some currently open issues (such as determination of the boundaries of systems, completeness/sufficiency of a given set of concerns, and ranking/preference of concerns) and research opportunities (such as methodological support of deriving concerns, objective concerns assessment in various application contexts, and computer support of PST) are suggested.

Cyber-physical systems (CPSs) are seen as one of the tangible results of the convergence of advanced information technology, nanotechnology, biotechnology, cognitive science, and social science in addition to conventional systems science, engineering, and technologies. Designing next-generation cyber-physical systems (NG-CPSs) is a challenging matter for abundant reasons. It is not possible to consider all reasons and to address their interplays simultaneously in one paper. Therefore, this position paper elaborates only on a selected number of topical issues and influential factors. The author claims that the shift of the paradigm of CPSs and the uncertainty related to the paradigmatic systems features of NG-CPSs are among the primary reasons. Since the future of CPSs will be influenced strongly by their intellectualization, adaptation/evolution, and automation, these aspects are also addressed. It is argued that interaction and cooperation with NG-CPSs should be seen from a multi-dimensional perspective and that socialization of NG-CPSs needs more attention in research. The need for aggregation, management, and exploitation of the growing amount of synthetic systems knowledge produced by smart CPSs is seen by the author as an important emerging concern.

Hazard-intense applications of cyber-physical systems (CPSs), such as the evacuation of a building on fire, require personalized informing on the basis of a real-time assessment of dynamic context. In this paper, a context-dependent message construction mechanism (CD-MCM) is proposed with the objectives (i) to inform people about the emergence and development of a situation unsafe for them, and (ii) to instruct them what they have to do according to an adaptively computed action plan. To achieve this, the concepts of 'situation' and 'impact indicator' have been introduced in order to facilitate the computation of personalized action plans and to send messages about the level of danger and the requested actions. In both activities, the inferred implications of situations are used as the basis of informing the involved people. The messages are adapted to actual situations. In addition, the concept of 'relevance indicator' was utilized to assess the significance of the standing situations for the concerned people in a quasi-real-time manner. The level of danger was evaluated for each person by totaling the values of the situation-related relevance indicators. This was also used to select the proper message templates from the predefined alternatives in the process of message construction. The personalized messages were generated based on the chosen message template and the various message components describing concerned situations or providing instructions. The CD-MCM was validated in a simulated indoor fire evacuation guiding application. In the practical evaluation of the quality of the generated messages, a sample of test people was involved. The results of the evaluation show that the messages generated by the proposed CD-MCM lead to more effective messaging about the personal context and the expected actions than the messages constructed by using static context information only. The reason is that the proposed template-based message construction mechanism facilitates the appropriateness as well as the articulation of the contents of context-sensitive personalized messages.