The objective of the conference was to provide a research platform for academics and researchers to exchange research findings in various disciplines of Systems Engineering and Management Science, Big data being one of the key topics. Both Professor Jian Chen from the Tsinghua University and Professor Yong Shi from the Chinese Academy of Sciences gave keynote speeches on this topic.

In his speech, Professor Jian Chen focused on the application of big data in business management. He emphasized the change in the relationship between customers, firms and government caused by big data. New business models and frameworks of big data were put forward and several successful cases of big data businesses were articulated. The opportunity and challenges of implementing big data on the business management were analysed and summarised.

Professor Yong Shi addressed the analytical side of big data, novel algorithms and approaches for data mining and data analysis were suggested. He also highlighted the potential of using expert knowledge to further refine the result of the data analysis. Many real-life big data applications were described.

In the Quality and Reliability Engineering section, Zhenglin gave a presentation on the deterioration and maintenance model for concrete decks with chloride-induced deterioration. He first estimated the effect of chloride-induced deterioration by using Phase-type distribution. The result shows that the chloride-induced deterioration has a noteworthy effect on the concrete deck lifetime. Then, he designed a condition-based maintenance policy to mitigate the chloride-induced deterioration.

The optimal inspection interval for the concrete deck was calculated to reduce the cost of ownership. The designed deterioration model improves the previous Markovian deterioration model on bridge deck deterioration by modeling the chloride-induced deterioration as an induced accelerated deterioration. It contributes theoretically by improving the previous deterioration model for the concrete deck from a Markovian deterioration model with a single deteriorating path to a continuous-time Markov chain with multiple-dependent deteriorating paths.

The designed condition-based maintenance has the capability to mitigate the problem by reducing the deterioration rate back to normal. It has a practical value to improve the performance of maintenance on the concrete deck.

For further information contact Zhenglin Liang zl284@cam.ac.uk