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Bath research on the design of multi-agent software systems governed by norms and institutions has directly influenced the development of the essential business systems of an internet-based trading company, and been instrumental in their success.
The Book Depository (BD) was founded in 2004. In 2005, their Chief Technical Officer, Emad Eldeen Elakehal, sought the expertise of Julian Padget in the Department of Computer Science at Bath, and began a part-time PhD, working on the application of normative frameworks to the design and implementation of business systems. Elakehal has applied these principles in the design and construction of two key subsystems of BD's software infrastructure: the catalogue maintenance system (live since 2006) and the price checker and setter system (since 2008). Their effectiveness has underpinned the growth and success of the company by providing robust software implementation of business processes that adapt to changing market conditions. The company's turnover grew from £24M to £120M from 2008 - 2011, and continues to grow. The software systems enabled this growth to take place with no increase in the operations team's manpower, and now handle a catalogue of over 8 million titles, from 120 suppliers, all available within 48 hours to customers on the Book Depository's own web site or via Amazon's marketplace: all Amazon book customers have seen offers of books generated by this software. The software underpins BD's award-winning business, a unique offering in the book retail sector which attracted takeover by Amazon in 2011. BD's Managing Director states that "without the agent/norm based technical systems not one of the business' USPs could have been effectively realised."
Research into the operational characteristics and applicability of biological reaction networks, carried out at the university in collaboration with groups at Caltech and Sony Systems, revealed the pressing need for a standard format that could be used for storage and exchange of mathematical models of such systems. Hertfordshire researchers played a crucial role in the initial design, dissemination and early exploitation of the Systems Biology Markup Language, SBML, now recognised as the de facto standard format for this purpose. Several major scientific publishers operating across academic boundaries require their authors to use SBML, and 254 software tools, including MATLAB and Mathematica, are now SBML-compliant. Online forums testify to a sizeable, international user-developer community that encompasses engineers, biologists, mathematicians and software developers.
Research was undertaken into practical methodologies for integrating disparate engineering design software packages, including techniques for managing data in different formats and package functionality available through varying programming models. There was an emphasis on usability for end users allowing a complex solution to be built without advanced programming experience or technical understanding of the underlying packages. The results were made available through a commercial software package marketed by an SME, successfully contributing to a significant increase in company profile, modified internal working procedures and an expanded portfolio of services available to customers. The final product has only recently appeared on the market, but to good review, promising early sales and projections of significant sales and increased turnover.
Newcastle University's fundamental research into the theory of concurrency and the automated construction and analysis of asynchronous systems has resulted in novel technologies that have been adopted and applied worldwide by industry. This case study describes impact over the last five years on the industrial development of asynchronous microprocessor chips, in particular, deployed by Intel for handling financial transactions on NYSE and NASDAQ (with combined daily volume of trade exceeding £80 billion), and the improvements in business process analysis through the world-leading open-source ProM tools (downloaded over 65,000 times since 2008, and used by a number of major organisations, e.g. ING Bank and Deloitte).
Newcastle University's fundamental research into the automated synthesis of asynchronous systems and metastability analysis has resulted in new technologies that have been adopted worldwide by the microprocessor industry and educational sectors. In particular, Newcastle's asynchronous design methods and tools based on Petri nets have been used by the industry leading vendor Intel Corporation for their switch silicon technology, on which most transactions on the NYSE and NASDAQ (with combined daily volume of trade exceeding £80 billion) now rely. Oracle Corporation used the results of Newcastle's metastability analysis research for building their SPARC series of servers, marketed as having "world's fastest microprocessor".
Research in organisational decision making has led to the establishment of a Sentencing Information System for the Republic of Ireland (ISIS) which enables judges, lawyers and the public to access information on sentencing patterns within the Republic of Ireland. "ISIS enables Judges and others engaged in the sentencing process... to develop their knowledge and understanding of sentencing practices. This ...benefits the understanding of defendants and witnesses, including victims of the entire process. All of this is being done without jeopardizing judicial independence and impartiality" (Source 9). With 7000 user visits annually from 84 different countries, ISIS has international impact on increasing the transparency of judicial decision-making, is widely regarded as a particularly significant development in legal processes, has stimulated public discussion on sentencing patterns and is informing public policy in the management of the criminal justice system.
The volume and diversity of data that companies need to handle are increasing exponentially. In order to compete effectively and ensure companies' commercial sustainability, it is becoming crucial to achieve robust traceability in both their data and the evolving designs of their systems. The CRISTAL software addresses this. It was originally developed at CERN, with substantial contributions from UWE Bristol, for one of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) experiments, and has been transferred into the commercial world. Companies have been able to demonstrate increased agility, generate additional revenue, and improve the efficiency and cost-effectiveness with which they develop and implement systems in various areas, including business process management (BPM), healthcare and accounting applications. CRISTAL's ability to manage data and their provenance at the terabyte scale, with full traceability over extended timescales, based on its description-driven approach, has provided the adaptability required to future proof dynamically evolving software for these businesses.
This case study embodies a non-linear relationship between underpinning research, software development and deployment. It involves computer science research at UWE in conjunction with its applied development for the world's largest particle physics laboratory and onward deployment commercially into private sector industry.
Compendium software is used to map dialogue and information around socio-technical dilemmas with economic, public policy, educational and health impacts. In Australia, urban planners attribute stakeholder buy-in to dialogue mapping with Compendium. In the USA, a deadlocked environmental planning process used it to make progress, while Southern California Edison use it to manage environmental policy. In the NHS, it can map therapeutic group dynamics, while in Germany, a journalist summarised a medical ethics case to parliament with it. More than 170 companies and individuals have endorsed Compendium, a striking application being to control Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) at work.
Research in the Centre for Software Reliability (CSR) at City University London has made significant advances in ways to assess the safety and reliability of safety-critical, fault-tolerant software-based systems. This work supports quantitative safety cases and has influenced practice and regulation in UK and international industries. [text removed for publication] The work has had significant benefit for regulators and licensees of UK nuclear plant, has been recognised in the US nuclear industry and is additionally of benefit to the general public, in ensuring not only that reasoning about the safety of nuclear plant is rigorous and valid, but also that it is seen to be so in order that safety claims are widely and justifiably believed.
The Airbus company has used OntoREM, a semi-automated methodology developed at UWE Bristol, for developing systems' requirements specifications and improving the quality of such specifications. This has saved Airbus [text removed for publication] cost and time to develop aircraft operability requirements for wing design and industrialisation in two different aircraft programmes — with a significant increase in requirements reusability. It has enabled improved assessment of risk in advance of a project's start through prior estimation of the cost and time of developing requirements. This has allowed reliable forecasts and scheduling, and better management of the expectations of a project's key stakeholders.