Automatic Generation of System Descriptions for Plant Supervisory Control Systems

This paper describes the automatic generation of system descriptions for SCADA (Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition) systems. The proposed method produces various types of data and programs for SCADA systems from equipment definitions using conversion rules. This method can be used with various SCADA systems, and provides visual editing tools for conversion rule modification. The SCADA systems used in large-scale plants in the fields of electric power and transportation, consist of a lot of software for various supervisory control processes. Recently, it has become essential to improve the productivity of software, because system functions have advanced and have become large in scale. In order to improve the productivity, support is important in developing the parts that are dependent on the target systems. In this paper, we suggest a technique of generating the data and programs (called system descriptions) that are necessary for each SCADA system, from equipment definitions using rules. Figure 1 shows the framework of the proposed method. At first, 1) the various relationships between the equipment, i.e., the target of the SCADA system, are represented with directed graphs. Next, 2) these directed graphs are analyzed, and the equipment definitions are made into details by graph structure transformation. Finally, 3) process programs are generated using the conversion rules, by analyzing these directed graphs, and finding the groups of equipment that involve similar operations. This method enables the efficient input of the system descriptions. By using the existing Equipment Definition