Definition of a middleware for the vertical and horizontal integration of information in large plants

One of the main limits of the current technology for the management of large plant (like those concerning water, gas, power distribution) is the lack of vertical and/or horizontal integration of information. Vertical integration refers to the need to integrate systems implemented at different administrative level of an organisation. Horizontal integration improves the concept of integration, allowing the user of large plant to execute very complex transformations on data coming from several real applications, also of different types. The Mobicossum EU project, IST 1999-57455, is a CRAFT project, aimed to define a middleware between (mobile) user and lower level applications, based on vertical and horizontal integrations of information.