Measuring the Most Complex System Ever Built

University of Twente (Netherlands)

University of Twente researcher Aiko Pras warns that humanity has become overly dependent on the Internet. “Few people realize how dependent we have become in such a short time on the most complex technical system ever built by man, the Internet,” Pras says. “Without it there would be no more cashpoints, no water from the tap, and no more food from the supermarket.”

Pras is a member of the University of Twente’s Design and Analysis of Communication Systems (DACS) group, which is studying communication over SCADA systems, which are responsible for monitoring and coordinating critical infrastructures such as gas and water networks and the power grid.

“We’re also working on car-to-car communication, which in future will enable cars to communicate with one another, making the roads much safer,” he says. Pras notes there are still lots of technical challenges that need to be overcome, such as smart measuring techniques that enable conclusions to be drawn based on only a small part of the data. “You can compare measuring the Internet with measuring the universe: that too involves enormous quantities of data and you can’t measure the things you would like to,” he says.  Report