Joint Research Centre of the European Commission

The Joint Research Centre of the European Commission has an international R&D setting working with Laboratories, Industry and Education. The multi-national base of employees and the wide spread of language skills support cross cultural understanding from both an administrative and research perspective. Members of the JRC have wide experience of R&D and in policy support to the European Commission. In particular it should be emphasised that the JRC has a neutral and independent status.

The Institute for Systems, Informatics and Safety (ISIS) is one of the seven Institutes which constitute the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission. It is sited in Ispra, Italy.

ISIS’ mission is to be an impartial centre of expertise of the European Union in the Innovative applications of Information Technology, the multi-disciplinary analysis of industrial, socio-technical and environmental systems and the science and technology of safety management. ISIS develops and applies expertise in a variety of Industrial and Technical fields. The Institute employs 300 permanent staff, 100 non-permanent and 50 trainees representing all EU Nations. ISIS has R&D and technology transfer activities in a variety of IT related domains, and in particular in the fields of dependable software applications, requirements engineering, multi-media applications, knowledge modelling, supervision software, intelligent control, visualisation and animation techniques, 3-D reconstruction of indoor environments.

Our understanding of requirements engineering derives from:

• requirements engineering practice
• requirements Engineering R&D activities that include the ESPRIT projects PRECEPT and MUSSELS
• organisation of specific industrial workshops on Requirements Engineering. (The first workshop set out to determine what the industrial needs were in Requirements Engineering, the second to consider ways in which industrial interest in Requirements R&D projects can be enhanced). Further workshops are being planned
• contacts with industry and academia networking (including OLOS, COTCOS, EWICS, ENCRESS), workshops, R&D activities and conferences.

More information on our activities may be found on our web-site:

http://ntsta.jrc.it/dsa/dsa.htm or by contacting Philip Morris on Philip.Morris@jrc.it or by telephone +39 332 78 96 37

• Morris, P. et al. "Industrial Workshop on Requirements for R&D in Requirements Engineering." in the Third IEEE International Symposium on Requirements Engineering. IEEE Computer Society Press, 1997.
• Morris, P. et al. "Requirements Engineering and Industrial Uptake" in the Third International Conference on Requirements Engineering, 1998. IEEE Computer Society Press, 1998.

BRIEF CV OF KEY RESEARCHERS

Philip Morris studied Philosophy in London, Helsinki and Birmingham, and Information Technology at the University of Hull, He worked as a Research Associate in the Department of Computer Science at the University of York. Since then he has worked for the Joint Research Centre in Italy in policy support for the European Commission. This has largely focused on Requirements Engineering and has embraced such topics as defining industrial needs and ways to promote industrial interest in Requirements Engineering research activities.

Stefan Scheer studied Computer Science Degree at the Technical University of Munich (Germany) with an emphasis on software engineering, compiler construction, mathematical logic and theoretical informatics. Before working at the Joint Research Centre he worked as a project engineer at Messerschmitt-Bölkow-Blohm (MBB) aircraft maintenance division in Munich, a system engineer at Standard Elektrik Lorenz (Alcatel) aircraft division in Stuttgart and a Management and a Software engineer at Siemens safety and security division, pre-development department in Munich. Current research interests within the dependability domain of Requirements Engineering include Formal Methods. Particular emphasis has been put upon the application of these methods and tools. This includes a pilot project using VSE (Verification Support Environment) method and tool in safety critical robotic application.

List of Members