Samir I. Shaheen

Sandra Rizkallah, Amir F. Atiya, Samir Shaheen

This paper presents a dataset for closest opposite questions in Arabic language. The dataset is the first of its kind for the Arabic language. It is beneficial for the assessment of systems on the aspect of antonymy detection. The structure is similar to that of the Graduate Record Examination (GRE) closest opposite questions dataset for the English language. The introduced dataset consists of 500 questions, each contains a query word for which the closest opposite needs to be determined from among a set of candidate words. Each question is also associated with the correct answer. We publish the dataset publicly in addition to providing standard splits of the dataset into development and test sets. Moreover, the paper provides a benchmark for the performance of different Arabic word embedding models on the introduced dataset.

Hosny Abbas, Samir Shaheen, Mohammed Amin

Modern supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems comprise variety of industrial equipment such as physical control processes, logical control systems, communication networks, computers, and communication protocols. They are concerned with control and supervision of production control processes. Modern SCADA networks contain highly distributed information, control, and location. Moreover, they contain large number of heterogeneous components situated in highly changing and uncertain environments. As a result, engineering modern SCADA is a challenging issue and conventional engineering approaches are no longer suitable for them because of their increasing complexity and highly distribution. In this research, Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) are used to enable building adaptive agent-based SCADA system by modeling system components as agents in the micro level and as organizations or societies of agents in the macro level. A prototype has been implemented and evaluated within a simulation environment for demonstrating the adaptive behavior of the system-to-be, which results in continuous improvement of system performance.

Hosny A. Abbas, Samir I. Shaheen, Mohammed H. Amin

SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) is concerned with gathering process information from industrial control processes found in utilities such as power grids, water networks, transportation, manufacturing, etc., to provide the human operators with the required real-time access to industrial processes to be monitored and controlled either locally (on-site)or remotely (i.e., through Internet). Conventional solutions such as custom SCADA packages, custom communication protocols, and centralized architectures are no longer appropriate for engineering this type of systems because of their highly distribution and their uncertain continuously changing working environments. Multi-agent systems (MAS) appeared as a new architectural style for engineering complex and highly dynamic applications such as SCADA systems. In this paper, we propose an approach for simply developing flexible and interoperable SCADA systems based on the integration of MAS and OPC process protocol. The proposed SCADA system has the following advantages: 1) simple (easier to be implemented); 2) flexible (able to adapt to its environment dynamic changes); and 3) interoperable (relative to the underlying control systems, which belongs to diverse of vendors). The applicability of the proposed approach is demonstrated by a real case study example carried out in a paper mill.

Hosny A. Abbas, Samir I. Shaheen, Mohammed H. Amin

Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) are adopted and tested with many complex and critical industrial applications, which are required to be adaptive, scalable, context-aware, and include real-time constraints. Industrial Control Networks (ICN) are examples of these applications. An ICN is considered a system that contains a variety of interconnected industrial equipments, such as physical control processes, control systems, computers, and communication networks. It is built to supervise and control industrial processes. This paper presents a development case study on building a multi-layered agent-based ICN in which agents cooperate to provide an effective supervision and control of a set of control processes, basically controlled by a set of legacy control systems with limited computing capabilities. The proposed ICN is designed to add an intelligent layer on top of legacy control systems to compensate their limited capabilities using a cost-effective agent-based approach, and also to provide global synchronization and safety plans. It is tested and evaluated within a simulation environment. The main conclusion of this research is that agents and MAS can provide an effective, flexible, and cost-effective solution to handle the emerged limitations of legacy control systems if they are properly integrated with these systems.