Digital Technologies and Interoperability

Developing industry-wide standards to ensure interoperability of new technologies, and fostering the development of Industry 4.0 automation and control technologies.

Australia’s entire resources sector relies upon automated processes controlled by a wide-variety of hardware and software tools, many of which are legacy solutions. New digital technologies offer tremendous opportunities to increase the productivity, reliability and security of these processes particularly in the technically demanding LNG and hydrogen export sectors. However, these digital technologies are typically not interoperable: products from one vendor cannot communicate or work with products from another. This constraint applies to interactions between new and legacy digital systems, as well as between modern Industry 4.0 technologies.

This research program works to develop the industry-wide standards necessary to ensure new digital technologies for use in both LNG and hydrogen export are interoperable and provide a platform for demonstrating that interoperability. In parallel, emerging Industry 4.0 technologies for advanced process automation and control (e.g. digital twins, predictive maintenance sensing) will be benchmarked rigorously to demonstrate their fidelity and value.

The successful deployment of interoperable Industry 4.0 technologies in LNG and hydrogen export plants will enable:

  • increased throughput and energy efficiency through the improved understanding of the process delivered via advanced digital sensors and models, and
  • reduced maintenance and inventory costs through the ability to reliably predict equipment failure rates and thereby avoid excessive expenditure on contingent spares.

Where possible, the program leverages published standards and specifications, such as the Open Industrial Interoperability Ecosystem (OIIE) specification published by MIMOSA as part of ISO/TS 18101-1:2019, for achieving standards-based interoperable digital ecosystem.

The program also leverages facilities available at the UWA Industry 4.0 Testlab for Energy & Resources Digital Interoperability, the Australian OIIE™ Interoperability Laboratory at UniSA, the CISCO Innovation Central Centre at Curtin, the ACEPT Facility at South Metropolitan TAFE and other data streams made available by industry partners.

FEnEx CRC Commonwealth Milestones for Program 3

Research Projects

Requirements, specifications and piloting of interoperable ecosystem cluster management (22.RP3.0120)

Requirements, specifications and piloting of interoperable ecosystem cluster management (22.RP3.0120)

Developing, extending, and validating OIIE Specifications and Standards for facilitating ecosystem and cluster management.

Asset Reliability and Risk Interoperability to Optimise Maintenance Execution and Improve Risk Management of Energy Producers (21.RP3.0106)

Asset Reliability and Risk Interoperability to Optimise Maintenance Execution and Improve Risk Management of Energy Producers (21.RP3.0106)

Demonstrating the benefit of using standards-based interoperable interfaces to bridge the gap between siloed reliability and risk models.

Open Specification for Analytics Interoperability (20.RP3.0048)

Open Specification for Analytics Interoperability (20.RP3.0048)

Identifying high priority use cases to develop the industry-wide standards necessary to ensure interoperability of new digital technologies for LNG and hydrogen export.

Digital Twin ​Feasibility Study (20.RP3.0042) – Completed

Digital Twin ​Feasibility Study (20.RP3.0042) – Completed

Exploring flexible, low-cost software solutions using digital twins for accurate simulation of operational behaviour in LNG and hydrogen plants.

PhD Projects

Project Title
Researcher
Open Analytics Interoperability
Digital Technologies and Interoperability
Design & Development of Digital Twin to Improve Safety and Production Efficiency
Developing a Digital Competencies Framework for the New-Energy Sector
Ontological Enrichment of Data Standards for Digital Twin Management
Artificial Intelligence and Advanced Data Analytics Framework for Hydrogen-enabled Intergraded Energy Systems
Contextualised Digital Twin Platform for Sustainable and Resilient Renewable Energy Plants

Program Leaders

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Professor Markus Stumptner

Program 3 Lead (University of South Australia)
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Matt Selway

FENEX CRC FOUNDATION FELLOW
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Karamjit Kaur

FEnEx CRC Foundation Fellow
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Rebecca Morgan

FEnEx CRC Foundation Fellow
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