System information modelling

System information modelling (SIM) is a generic term used to describe the process of modelling complex connected systems. System information models are digital representations of connected systems, such as electrical instrumentation and control, power and communication systems. The objects modelled in a SIM have a 1:1 relationship with the objects in the physical system. Components, connections and functions are defined and linked as they would be in the real world.

The concept of SIM has existed since the mid 1990s. It was first proposed in 1994 by an Australian instrument, electrical and control system engineering company – I&E Systems Pty Ltd. Like many technological innovations the idea for SIM was born out of necessity. Since the mid-nineties, the complexity of power, control and Information and Communication Technology (ICT) systems has been growing exponentially due to rapid advances in technology; this has rendered the traditional paper-based methodologies and applications used for system design to become obsolete.

The cost of design related activities can be up to 70% of the total project expenditure in an electrical instrumentation and control system (EICS) engineering project. Analyses revealed that the limited nature of paper-based methods/workflows had significant contributions to the high design cost which required duplication of information on multiple documents resulting in design errors and omissions and therefore increasing the cost of labour. With this in mind, the company realized there is a need to shift away from the traditional paper-based methods to a more efficient systematic digital modelling approach.

The term 'System Information Modelling' was first published in a technical report in 2012 by Peter E.D. Love and Jingyang Zhou. The report presented empirical evidence to demonstrate that the use of a SIM could potentially improve productivity and reduce the cost to produce EICS documentation. The research examined a set of electrical engineering drawings of an Iron Ore Stacker Conveyor system; errors and omissions identified from the drawings have been classified and quantified. The report concluded that the use of traditional Computer-Aided-Design (CAD) methods to produce electrical engineering drawings is ineffective, inefficient and costly.

Since 2013, a number of scholarly research papers have been published that have demonstrated the effectiveness and efficiency of using a SIM instead of CAD to design and document EICS in a variety of projects (e.g., iron ore processing plant, FPSO safety control system, copper smelter plant, oil refinery, and a geothermal power plant).

...
Wikipedia