An agent-based environment for operational design

We provide the development up to date of P-DOSS (Plant Design and Operation Support System), an engineering support system that aims at assisting designers working in the detailed process design for creating a more safe, controllable and reliable plant. P-DOSS includes an integrated modeling environment for exploring multiple P&ID design alternatives together with the capability of analyzing each of them by means of simulating the operations carried out during the life-cycle of the plant. To this end, an experimental prototype has been constructed comprising a simulated multi-agent environment in which it becomes possible to concurrently carry out plans and actions. As a result a constant feedback of simulation agents is the key to produce more reliable design and operations. The object-oriented structure of P-DOSS distinguishes between the process component models and their physical counterparts which provides the possibility of selecting the adequate model's fidelity, and sets the basis of a more flexible information model for both plant design and operations.