Abstract: The objective of this research is to develop semantic foundations, cross-layer system architectures and adaptation services to improve dependability in instrumented cyberphysical spaces (ICPS). The approach is based on the principles of “computation reflection” where information from heterogeneous sensing devices is used to create a digital representation of the evolving cyberphysical world for use by mission-critical applications such as infrastructure monitoring, and incident-site emergency response.

This research is motivated by the observation that especially in challenging environments, that exhibit many forms of unreliability and failures, the physical world imposes severe limitations on how distributed algorithms can operate. Inspired by earlier work on delay- and disruption-tolerant networking, we have developed a distributed computing model based on partially ordered knowledge sharing that makes very few assumptions about the underlying network, its topology, and its characteristics.