Resilient Infrastructures | Big Data A Siemens software platform links a variety

of databases, thus helping to prevent

gas and steam turbines from breaking down.
Information technology and the Internet
are vastly increasing the amount of data that
has to be stored worldwide. This data in-
cludes not only the information generated on
social media such as images, texts, and
videos on platforms such as Facebook, but
also the data that employees store in corpo-
rate networks and the machine data that is
produced by sensors, transmitted through
the Internet, and collected in databases.
According to a study conducted by IT mar-
ket researchers at Forrester, between 2006
and 2012 the global data volume increased
tenfold. In 2012 the data volume rose above
2.5 zettabytes for the first time. Thats an
unimaginably large number with 21 zeros. If
this data were stored on CD-ROMs, the result-
ing pile would be ten times higher than the
distance from the earth to the moon. The
amount of data continues to increase rapidly.
According to a study carried out by market re-
searchers at IDC, data volume is expected to
rise to five zettabytes in Western Europe
alone by 2020. One exabyte corresponds to
1 billion gigabytes and is the equivalent of
about 20 billion filing cabinets full of text
documents. A zettabyte is a thousand times
larger.
One reason for this increase is the fact
that the Internet is becoming more mobile.

Early Warning Systems for

Turbines and Tomographs
Although advanced infrastructures such as energy and transportation systems are making life
more comfortable, whenever they break down the consequences can be severe. To prevent
interruptions, Siemens is working with partners to evaluate sensor data that helps detect
technical problems early on. The objective is to create robust and failsafe systems.

Huge amounts of information are being gen-

erated by smartphone programs in particular.
Around 2.5 exabytes of data are transmitted
through the mobile Internet every day and
stored on platforms.
To date, this vast amount of data has
largely remained unexploited. However, this
is set to change, thanks to big data tech-
nologies that can analyze large unstructured
data volumes. They do this by means of algo-

80 Pictures of the Future | Fall 2013


rithms that can discover unexpected patterns
and new interrelationships in what, to hu-
mans, appears to be virtual chaos. Compa-
nies can turn such information into new in-
sights not only to optimize business
processes, products, factories, and customer
relations but also to control complex infra-
structures and optimize service and mainte-
nance. The aim is to combine sensor data
about the condition of machines and equip-
ment with information about error messages
and quality assurance statistics.
Such a combination would allow smart
surveillance systems to detect faults early so
that defective components could be replaced
and problems could be resolved before a
breakdown. In gas-fired power plants, for ex-
ample, motion sensors would measure tur-
bine values regarding wear, and the sensors
would then transmit these values to a com-
puter system. The latter would analyze the
data and trigger an alarm if, for example, a
critical limit, such as the highest permissible
temperature in the combustion chamber,
were exceeded. The system already works
pretty well, says Dr. Steffen Lamparter, an
expert in the Business Analytics and Monitor-
ing department at Siemens Corporate Tech-
nology (CT) in Munich.
In the future, researchers would like to
combine the data with additional informa-
tion and evaluate it in real time. This informa-
tion would concern a variety of parameters,
including the amount of energy produced
and the changes to electric currents within a
motor. According to conservative estimates,
doing so would reduce the time that techni-
cians need to access relevant data by at least
25 percent. Because an average of 80 per-
cent of technician processing time is spent on
collecting data, we estimate that over one
million Euros could be saved each year just in
the servicing of turbines, says Lamparter.
Such real-time analyses are already being
conducted for Siemens latest H-Class gas tur-
bines. Siemens commissioning engineers can
call up the data from a newly delivered tur-
bine at any time and without delay and eval-
uate it regardless of their location. Each gas
turbine is equipped with 1,500 sensors that
precisely measure key operating values, such
as temperature, pressure, gas composition,
generated output, and much more, down to
the second.
Whether its gas turbines, combined cycle
turbines or other systems, the experience
Siemens has gained with the many facilities
it services for its customers allows it to obtain
additional insights by conducting smart
searches in the operating data and error mes-
Pictures of the Future | Fall 2013
sages. These insights can then be used to fur-
ther optimize individual systems. The com-
pany plans to create a computer-assisted ex-
pert system that will examine the
interrelationships between the faults that oc-
cur in a facility and the components that are
installed there. In the future, designers will
be able to access this data when they are se-
lecting components for new facilities. The in-
formation will tell them how the components
have functioned in practice, explains Lam-
parter. In this way, facilities could be made
more robust from the very start.
Spotting Patterns in Complexity. Such
methods and techniques are currently also
being developed in a European research proj-
ect called Optique. In this project, ten part-
ners including companies such as Siemens
and the Norwegian oil corporation Statoil, as
well as researchers at European universities
are developing basic technologies for mak-
ing searches in complex databases more ef-
ficient.
The challenge: Various databases have to
be integrated and interlinked while the pool of
data continuously changes and expands
The projects aim is to link different data
sources and databases with one another and
to give them a certain amount of intelli-
gence. The plan is to use powerful algorithms
to discover unexpected patterns and interre-
lationships at a speed and a level of quality
that would have been considered inconceiv-
able only a short while ago.
In the future, a companys employees will
ideally be able to use simply formulated ques-
tions to search for information in large data
pools that consist of hundreds of interlinked
and differently-structured databases. The an-
swers employees receive will help them to
make decisions. Bringing this about is a major
challenge, due to the distributed nature of
the information and the lack of a uniform
data model.
Whereas Statoil is primarily interested in
improving database use for the exploration
of new oilfields, Dr. Mikhail Roshchin, who
represents Siemens application case in the
Optique project, hopes to optimize data use
for the preventive maintenance of power
plant turbines. His objective is to make future
power networks more resistant to break-
downs. Siemens is already offering its cus-
tomers a preventive turbine maintenance
Resilient Infrastructures | Big Data
service. Energy Services Oil & Gas, as well as
our power plant business are accomplishing
this through implementation of specialized
software platforms, Roshchin reports.
Siemens now intends to optimize its preven-
tive maintenance services by linking them to
additional data sources.
In our part of the project, the main focus
is not so much on handling huge amounts of
data, explains Lamparter. The turbine main-
tenance service generates only 30 gigabytes
of data per day and the data pool has a total
of 10 terabytes. A far greater challenge is
posed by the need to integrate different data-
bases and simultaneously link them with a
pool of data that is continuously changing
and expanding. As a result, we have to con-
tinuously update our calculations, says Lam-
parter. This is a demanding task, especially
when you need to obtain the results in real
time, if possible.
Smart Evaluation Tools. Other methods
must be used so that unstructured data, such
as error messages in text form, can be com-
bined with structured data, such as machine
values. Semantic text recognition analyses
and image analysis procedures can, for exam-
ple, transform text, audio, video, and image
files into analyzable data, making them us-
able for decision-making for the first time.
Here, however, the challenge is that a wide
range of data sources and formats must be
logically linked to one another in such a way
that conclusions can be drawn regarding the
causes of faults and breakdowns.
To make the analyses more effective,
even the individual databases are to be
equipped with smart evaluation tools, says
Lamparters colleague, Thomas Hubauer, as
he explains another of the research projects
aims. As a result, the calculation of key sta-
tistical figures, for example, might no longer
require all the data to be read into the data
pool. Instead, only the sample space relevant
to the inquiry in question would be needed.
This sample space could provide the average
value and the standard deviation, among
other things.
At the moment, however, experts still
need the help of their IT colleagues in order
to access information from different data-
81

bases. Thats because the existing informa-
tion must first be selected and loaded into
special data spaces before searches can be
made. This requires special knowledge that
would overtax the capabilities of someone
who is not well-versed in IT. However, this is
set to change as well, because only the ex-
perts themselves know what will really ben-
efit them, says Hubauer. As a result, data-
base searches will have to become as simple
as those made with Internet search engines
such as Google.
The Optique research project is still in its
early stages. It began in November 2012 and
will run until the end of 2016. Siemens has
high hopes for the project. We expect the
findings to be transferable to other big data
applications so that they can be utilized for
them as well, says Gerhard Kress from Cor-
porate Technology, where he is responsible
for coordinating big data projects running at
Siemens.
Using an approach similar to that of their
colleagues at Siemens Energy Sector, special-
ists at Healthcare have developed an expert
system for calculating the likelihood that a
key component such as an X-ray tube in a
computer tomograph might become defec-
tive. X-ray tubes play a crucial role in deter-
mining system availability and image quality.
TubeGuard can reliably predict a breakdown
early on, says Kress.
In view of this, tomographs are being
equipped with sensors that monitor key pa-
rameters such as the current in the tube, an-
ode rotation, and the temperature of the oil.
This monitoring software continuously trans-
mits operating data to a Siemens service cen-
ter in real time. This data enables our col-
leagues to use complex algorithms to
calculate the likelihood of a breakdown
within the next few days, says Kress. This en-
ables service employees to make an appoint-
ment with radiologists in good time so that
the defective component can be replaced
without disrupting operations.
The system already works well, says
Kress. In the future, huge amounts of data
and the combination of different databases
could make it possible to develop new busi-
ness concepts for procedures such as process
analysis. We could find correlations in the
big data pools and recognize interrelation-
ships that would help improve processes and
procedures in doctors offices. This in turn
would help to stabilize healthcare costs, says
Kress about a possible application for the sys-
tem. However, a considerable amount of re-
search will be needed before that goal can be
achieved. Hans Schrmann
82
Resilient Infrastructures | Interview
Prof. Hans Uszkoreit, 63,
teaches computational lin-
guistics at Saarland Univer-
sity. He is also Scientific Di-
rector and Head of the
Language Technology Lab
at the German Research
Center for Artificial Intelli-
gence in Saarbrcken. He
develops technologies for
the machine processing of
human language and has
co-founded several startup
companies. Together with
his research team, he has
created a process for find-
ing complex interrelation-
ships, facts, and incidents in
large texts. The system au-
tomatically learns rules
from the Web. It often does
so on the basis of millions
of examples, which it filters
using knowledge obtained
from Wikipedia and many
other sources. In recogni-
tion of his work, Uszkoreit
received a Google Faculty
Research Award in 2012
and a Google Focused Re-
search Award in 2013.
How do you analyze data?
Uszkoreit: By posing a wide variety of
questions. They can be very precise, such as
those we ask when were analyzing trends
for consumer research. They can also be
less precise, for example when the data
fluctuates. Take the increase in drug pre-
scriptions. Here we want to know what
causes the increase. When you deal with
vast amounts of data, you sometimes get
answers to questions you didnt even ask.
Where do you think the evaluation
of data will generate the biggest
economic or social benefits?
Whats Needed:
Uszkoreit: The main benefit is that we
make not only structured data but also all
types of unstructured data, such as texts,
images, and voice recordings, usable. In
addition, we can find correlations within
the data. For example, we can compare
weather station data with harvest informa-
tion or traffic statistics, or nutritional facts
with medical data. Society benefits from
this knowledge of complex processes and
interrelationships, no matter whether its in
the healthcare sector or related to the econ-
omy. The objective is to find patterns and to
create correct digital depictions of the real
world. To enable computers to understand
language, you also need large amounts of
data and in-depth knowledge of the world.
What risks do you see?
Uszkoreit: Theres a potential risk when-
ever knowledge about individuals, groups
or processes can be misused. For example,
it could involve someone who uses medical
information to blackmail patients or has de-
tailed knowledge of a bank buildings archi-
tecture and gives it to gangsters.
What do you recommend?
Uszkoreit: You can compare this situation
with the financial system. Although there is
always a certain risk that money will lose its
value, we havent banned it and returned to
bartering. Instead, we have created systems
Pictures of the Future | Fall 2013