As told by Ian Verhappen and Graham Nasby.
The ISA108 committee is working in a collaborative effort with IEC SC65E WG10 on an important emerging area of automation: intelligent device management. With large amounts of data available from a single device, being able to manage the data and its flow, as well as identify the necessary tools and infrastructure to do so, is important. ISA recently adopted the IEC document as ISA-TR 63082-1:2020 and is now working on Part 2, which will be an International Standard. ISA-108 will enable the community to use this information rather than be overwhelmed by options and stymied by “analysis paralysis.” Using the information from intelligent devices will lead to higher returns on control system investments and better use of the skills of overworked support teams.
The ISA-112 supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) standard will help define how all the disparate parts of a control system can be and are linked together to form a single system able to communicate machine-to-machine as well as machine-to-human. With the increasing distribution of controls to the edges of a control system, being able to integrate those controls using best practices captured in this series of documents will help achieve that goal across a wide range of industries.
Work on the first ISA-112 SCADA systems standard is not completed yet, but according to Graham Nasby, a leader in the water/wastewater community, it is still having a major impact on how SCADA systems are designed, used, and implemented in several sectors. For example, large water utilities in Ontario, Canada, are already using the ISA-112 framework for managing large automation projects and SCADA master-planning activities. Many other water utilities, sewerage districts, oil/gas companies, and other organizations are now starting to look at the ISA-112 SCADA framework for managing their automation assets, he says. There is a need for this sort of guidance, and ISA112 is working to provide it.
