Academician Ali Abbasov spoke at the opening of the international conference
24.08.2022 /With the support of the Ministry of Digital Development and Transport and the organization of the Institute of Applied Mathematics at Baku State University, the 8th International Conference on Control and Optimization with Industrial Applications (COIA-2022) kicked off on August 24, 2022.
The General Director of the Institute of Control Systems (ICS) Academician Ali Abbasov spoke at the opening of the conference. We bring to your attention his speech:
The 8th International Conference on Control and Optimization with Industrial Applications began its activities in Azerbaijan in 2005 and has today become a discussion and application platform attracting the attention of scientists and specialists from the world's leading research centers, universities and prominent companies. These conferences have played a major role in the development of optimal control methods and optimization theory in the country, as well as in its practical application.
As a result, these conferences helped to strengthen existing scientific ties with the United States, England, France, Turkey, Iran, Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and a number of other countries, and to build new scientific ties with many science centers.
Moreover, the level of research works carried out in our country has significantly increased. If we compare the number of papers by our scientists published in top-rated international journals in the field of optimization methods and their applications with what we had about 15 years ago, that is, when the first COIA conference was held, we will see that compared to the period before 2005, their number has increased several times in recent years. The authors of these papers are our scientists, most of whom have been active participants in these conferences.
These conferences are also a venue for serious discussion of the results obtained by many schools of scientific thought. These schools to some extent have been strengthened and shaped by the opportunities for academic discussion provided by these conferences.
Another important achievement is the publishing of internationally rated journals in our country. These journals generally publish the works of authors who took an active part in these conferences. These are the journals indexed in international databases: Clarivate Analytics' Web of Science database: in Q1: Applied and Computational Mathematics with an impact factor of 4.771 and TWMS Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics with an impact factor of 2.722, Proceedings of the Institute of Mathematics and Mechanics, indexed in Web of Science, Transactions Issue Mathematics indexed in Scopus, Mathematical Reviews, ZentralblattMATH, Azerbaijan Journal of Mathematics indexed in Web of Science ESCI (Emerging Sources Citation Index). Control and efficient control have always been one of the main problems in industry, socio-economic development, life safety and other fields, and in our time of the 4th industrial revolution revival, it becomes especially relevant and essential. There is no doubt that optimal control, correct decision making and evaluation of results are possible as a result of modern research, applied and experimental design works as part of borderless cooperation, collaboration of scientific and technical potential of most countries and international organizations, and the contribution of our conference in this area is very high.
In its broadest sense, control is the decision-making process in conditions of uncertainty, which is a rather complex intellectual task involving a multi-criteria choice of one or more alternatives from a set on the basis of their value-oriented integral estimates. The decision-making task is one of the most common in any subject area. For example, the Institute of Control Systems has developed a fundamental framework for creating a universal information platform capable of providing efficient decision making in the structural units of micro- and macroeconomics at a higher level of contextual task formalization. The proposed solutions involve the use of classical methods of decision-making theory, game theory, mathematical programming, mathematical statistics, etc., as well as the mathematical apparatus of fuzzy logic, neural network tools and hybrid (neuro-fuzzy) modeling systems. A higher level of solving applied problems on the basis of this platform implies multi-criteria evaluation of alternatives not only for a given date, but also for the future through the use of a fairly wide set of traditional and non-traditional tools for forecasting key indicators. Such a comprehensive analysis makes it possible to manage limited resources more efficiently and improve control efficiency accordingly.
One of the modern control problems is also automatic control systems built and programmed on the basis of computer databases, such as SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition), which are used in many industries, and also used and successfully implemented in the power system and power grids. I would like to point out that a product developed by our institute, a SCADA type system based on the Internet of Things, has begun to be widely used in the oil industry. Rapid automation and informatization bring cybersecurity issues to the forefront in the development and application of control systems.
Today, the focus of control is on the optimal control of complex dynamic objects, their theoretical and practical development. Operation of controlled objects, including aviation and aerospace equipment, critical infrastructure, nuclear power plants, complex military systems in conditions of uncertainty, changing environmental conditions and high safety requirements, requires new approaches to the design of modern adaptive intelligent control and monitoring systems.
Management of intelligent autonomous control systems is on the agenda today. Machines' intelligence is developing rapidly at present, and the results of their decision-making have a certain life-threatening aspect. Solving all these problems rests with scientists and specialists working in the field of control and optimization.
The expansion of the range of the papers discussed at the conference, the range of problems to be solved, the methods applied, new approaches and fields of application increases the appeal of the conference. Among the submitted papers, along with new methods of classical control and optimization theory, there are papers discussing solutions to complex and hard-to-formalize problems, using completely new approaches, including Artificial Intelligence, fuzzy logic, Big Data, natural language processing, etc. These new theories and methods are expanding the fields of application and innovating the principles of control. Thus, the focus of the conference will also be on the development of control systems for modern and autonomous objects that require control, using Artificial Intelligence and Augmented Intelligence, including complex robots, drones, driverless cars, etc., as well as the development of industrial control systems using Big Data and decision-making optimization problems.
I would like to note that one of the outputs of the conference will be the development and dissemination of a package of recommendations based on the discussions, which can be applied in various industries. We believe that this will be a contribution of our conference to the commercialization of scientific research results, technology transfer and development of innovation economy in most countries, including Azerbaijan, in the modern period.