ISET research group aims at studying and modelling some complex sustainable vs. socio-technical systems. These systems are issued from different applications domains such as manufacturing, environment and energy management (e.g. machine tools, energy power plant, intelligent building, supply chain, production system). The sustainability feature of these systems is based on the deployment of new paradigms like circular economy, industrial ecology and/or usage. Thus system within this research group has to be understood, on the one hand, as research object (more representative of industrial area or socio-technical one), and on the other hand, as methodology structured on systemic and life cycle dimensions to address the different issues related to the object as a whole. This research object can be also considered as "intelligent" because equipped with emergent and ambient technologies supporting information processing and communication as emerging capacities.

According to this global "system" context, ISET is focusing mainly on scientific issues related to the process of decision-making needed to control and manage the flows of the system (e.g. informational, physical, resource) with regards to requirements both of key performances (e.g. control of physical flows in consistence with informational one) but also of dependability and quality of service for communication networks.

So, the main objective of the research done within ISET is to develop methodologies, models, and tools allowing, on one hand, to have in a unified vision, a global and coherent representation of the studied system to aid optimally the decision-making, and on the other hand, to investigate in a structuring vision, three orientations on the studied system to achieve the three types of requirement previously underlined. These three research orientations are the following:

• The global engineering of the system dependability,
• The engineering on the management of the physical and energy flows of the system in synchronization with its informational flows
• The engineering on the communication networks of the system with regards to the informational flows transferred and the quality of service provided. 

Keywords of the ISET research group: Sustainable system, system approach, dependability, ambient intelligence, flow management, sensors networks, Green IT, industrial ecology, PHM

Scientific themes (and subjects) mainly addressed by the 3 scientific projects within ISET are the following:

• Global engineering of the system dependability – The project is named "Dependability in a System Vision" – Project acronym is SdFS
• Management engineering of the physical and energy flows of the system in consistence with its informational flows – The project is named "System with Ambient Intelligence capacities" – Project acronym is SIA
• Communication networks engineering of the system with regards to its informational flows and their quality of service – The project is named "System of Constrained Communication" – Project acronym is CO2

Research group organization

In order to meet the scientific challenge proposed, while keeping the main originality of this research group concerning the system sustainability vision, ISET management is constructed on a matrix of two dimensions to ensure coordination, coherence and dynamics between the different researchers owing different backgrounds and skills in link with the three works orientations selected. The two dimensions of the matrix are:

• A vertical dimension. It means that each scientific theme (each of the three projects) can develop specific researches within his discipline and area of expertise in order to increase its skills and background for anticipating the scientific evolutions (to be more competent in a short term).
• A horizontal dimension (or a cross dimension between the themes). It offers to the projects, opportunities in terms of "federating research domains" both to amplify synergies between the researchers and the themes, and to open new scientific issues emerging from the cross fertilization. These federating research domains want to have a strong regional or national impact, for example, in terms of societal challenge (e.g. energy management, waste management) or of employment challenge in link with a specific job sector (e.g. building construction with wood material).

Today, two different federating domains are already opened: one concerning the digital engineering for wood construction, and the other one related to the energy management. Within each of these two domains are working, in a integrative way, researchers of the three projects and having skills on dependability, flows management, and communication networks.