A Situation Aware Information Infrastructure (SAI) Framework

Computer network infrastructures constitute the critical backbone of every socio-economic ICT system. Consequently, they are becoming increasingly mission-critical in our society since they provide always-on services for many everyday applications (e.g., Cloud Data Centres), safety-critical operations (e.g., Air Traffic Control networks), critical manufacturing services (e.g., Utility networks and Industrial Control Systems), and critical real-time services (e.g., Financial Trading Systems). The resilience and ability of such systems to remain operational in the face of threats is therefore paramount; this needs to be done by taking remedial action and intelligently reshaping their resources. At the same time, current communication architectures do not allow for such informed and adaptive provisioning. In this paper, we introduce the concepts, principles and current research activities related to a new Situation Aware Information Infrastructure (SAI) framework being developed for next generation ICT environments.