List of Members
Institute Name: The University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology(UMIST), Department of ComputationDescription: The Department of Computation at UMIST is one of the leading European university departments actively involved in the teaching and research into information systems development and evolution.
In recent years, the Information Systems Research Group has developed an advanced laboratory which includes SUN workstations and TI (LISP-based) Explorers. These systems currently run BIM_Prolog, LISP, Poplog, ART, C++, RAMATIC, IPSYS and Smalltalk. The aim of the Group and its laboratory is to integrate knowledge-based technologies with software engineering practice and apply them to the problems of large system construction and maintenance. Particular emphasis is placed on requirements capture and the evolution of systems.
The information systems group is one of the major teaching and research groups within the department of Computation. The interests of the Group are concerned with the issues of the development and support of large information systems, that is data-intensive, transaction-oriented systems with substantial human-computer interaction.
The area of requirements engineering plays a prominent role in the groups' research teaching and technology transfer activities.
Over the past 8 years the group has been involved in a number of national and international research projects the majority of which fall within the domain of requirements engineering. Examples of these are:
i. UK SERC-funded research into providing automated assistance for program design using the Jackson methods. ii. ESPRIT projects: RUBRIC (928), AMADEUS (1252), TEMPORA (2498), F_CUBE (6612). iii. AIM project: IRHIS (A1014). iv. UK Alvey project: Analyst Assist. v. UK SERC-funded research into advanced workbench for the development of Information Systems. vi. Defence Research Agency funded projects: Investigation into the applicability of Deductive and Distributed databases.
The work of the group currently is based on the premise that requirements for a software system need to be articulated, represented and agreed within an organisational and social context. This gives rise to current concerns about the interaction between enterprise requirements and system requirements. Requirements engineering is therefore considered as being at the intersection of these two domains. To this end, the following themes are currently being researched: Goal-driven requirements analysis, rule modelling, non-functional requirements, tracing of requirements, dynamic view of requirements and tools for the support of the activities involver in the previous themes.
Topics in the area of requirements engineering are taught in all undergraduate and postgraduate courses within the department of computation.
Members of the group have also been involved with industrial courses and consultancy on requirements engineering to companies including ICL, NORWEB, British Telecom, Manchester Airport, Lloyds register etc.. Furthermore, the group has collaborated with many govermental, commmercial and industrial organisations such British Aerospace, SEMA, MoD, BIM, TXT, Iberdrola, BBK, CESELSA and many others.
Researchers associated with the project:
Prof. P. Loucopoulos, Ms. D. Filippidou, Dr. N. Loucopoulos
Brief CVs of Key Researchers:
Name: Prof Pericles Loucopoulos
Nationality: British/ Greek
Academic Qualifications & Experience: Professor Loucopoulos holds a B.Sc. in Mathematical Sciences, and MSc. and PhD in Computing. He is presently the Professor of Information Systems in the Department of Computation at UMIST where he has worked since 1984 following a period of six years in industry. During the period of April 1992-March 1994 he served as Head of the Department of Computation.
His research interests include complementary themes in the areas of: requirements engineering, conceptual modelling and system development methods. This research work has been supported by awards, totalling in excess of 4MECU, funded by the U.K. Science and Engineering Research Council, by the Commission of the European Communities under the ESPRIT and AIM Research and Development programmes and by industry.
He is the chairman of the Technical Committee on Information Systems Engineering, Requirements Engineering and Software Quality of the IEEE Systems, Man and Cybernetics Society. He is a member of the Steering Committee of the International Conference on the Entity-Relationship Approach. He was the Programme Chair of the CAiSEo92 and ER-94 conferences and has served on over 25 Programme Committees of international conferences.
He is the editor-in chief of the Journal of Requirements Engineering of Springer-Verlag due to be launched in 1996. He is the area editor for 'business applications and information systems engineering' for the international journal of Information Systems published by Pergamon Press and serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Information Systems published by Blackwell Scientific Publications.
Profesor Loucopoulos is the author of 4 books, the editor of 1 book, the editor of 2 volumes of conference proceedings and the author and co-author of over 80 journal, invited and refereed conference papers.
Selected Publications:
Loucopoulos, P. and Champion R.E.M.(1990) Concept Acquisition and Analysis in Requirements Specifications, Software Engineering Journal, Vol 5, No 2, pp. 116-124.
Loucopoulos, P. (1993): Requirements Engineering for Improved Information Systems, International Conference on Information Systems and Management of Data (CISMOD '93), New Delhi, India.
Lalioti, V. & Loucopoulos, P. (1993): Visualisation for Validation, 5th International Conference on Advanced Information Systems Engineering (CAiSEo93), Paris,Springer-Verlag Lecture Notes on Computer Science No 685, pp 143-164.
Loucopoulos, P. (1994): Extending Database Design Techniques to Incorporate Enterprise Requirements Evolution, BALTIC DB'94, Baltic Workshop on 'National Infrastructure Databases - Problems, Methods and Experiences' Vilnius, Lithuania.
Bubenko, J., Rolland, C., Loucopoulos, P., de Antonellis, V. (1994): Facilitating "Fuzzy to Formal" Requirements Modelling, IEEE International Conference on Requirments Engineering, pp. 154-157.
P. Loucopoulos and V. Karakostas.(1995) : Requirements Engineering for Information Systems Development, McGraw Hill.
Contact Details:
Principal Investigator: Prof. Pericles Loucopoulos,
Address:Department of Computation, UMIST, Sackville Street, P.O Box 88, Manchester, M60 1QD, UNITED KINGDOM
Telephone number: + 44 61 200 3332
Telefax number: + 44 61 200 3364
EMail: pl@sna.co.umist.ac.uk
List of Members