European thematic network IFS-intelligent forecasting systems

Summary form only given as follows. The European thematic network IFS brings together more than 20 universities, manufactures and end-users for the particular research objective intelligent forecasting systems. The paper describes the network structure and the national subprojects. The project is funded from the European Union by the Brite EuRam program. Countries all over Europe, from Crete and Rome in the south to Dublin and Helsinki in the north, work together in this project. The network has to install the support for the knowledge transfer, including: current overview of the state of the art and the main research activities in the field of intelligent forecasting systems; installation of common working groups between universities and industry; workshops for personnel training; and project-wide demonstrations to show the advantages of intelligent forecasting systems. The active members of the project work within three task groups: energy time series; fault and state forecasting; and modelling and control strategies. The paper reports about the IFS-activities, more than 20 national subprojects and a IFS Workshop 99 in Vienna in this field especially of results on the following horizontal themes between all national subprojects: robustness and online-capability of forecasting systems; exactness and validity of the prediction; data preparing for predictions (techniques and validation); adaptivity on new forecast problems, rapid prototyping techniques for forecasting; generalization capabilities of demonstrators, integration in existing EMS; and effectiveness of intelligent tools for the real world.