Abstracts

Session Topics

1. How we do business (Chair: Glen Johns)
This session is an opportunity for many laboratories to give an overview of their operations. It should include a layout of your facility, typical operating schedule, how the operations group is organized including number of operators and shift schedule, how your control rooms are arranged and used, and how the operators interact with other support groups when needed. In order to accommodate as many facilities as possible, the talks should be 8-10 minutes in length. Questions will be entertained via a panel discussion at the end of the session.

2. Operator Made Tools (Chair: Kazuro Furukawa)
Various operator-made tools have supported accelerator operations. They would automate common procedures and enhance the reliability of the beam operation. Scientists might propose new operational modes based on their beam studies, and operators could be requested to organize new operational tools. This session focuses on the subjects around those operator-made tools. How effectively those tools are employed to improve the operation? How do operators plan the development of high-level applications? How do scientists and operators cooperate in designing operational applications? How those tools are adapted to ever-changing operation modes? Are there any general tools to be shared or to be developed in collaboration among facilities? We would discuss our endeavours and achievements on those operator tools.....

3.Interface to Controls (Chair: Petra Schuett)
Operators know best what is needed in the control room to operate the machine and the software specialists know best how to write applications. How is your facility organised when it comes to writing software applications for the control room? We want to hear examples on fruitful collaborations between operators and software specialists.

4. Beam Diagnostics (Chair: Brian Freeman)
Those in Operations are generally the primary users of Diagnostic tools that help us monitor, measure, and maintain various beam parameters. How have you and members of your group been able to develop, improve, or maintain various machine diagnostics to ensure that the tools are adequately and efficiently able to do the job it was intended for? How does Operations establish an interface into the development of such diagnostic tools that are useful to them? What are the most useful or best diagnostics that you use in your Control Rooms?

5. Involving operators in Accelerator Physics and Commissioning (Chair: Montse Pont)
Empowering operators with opportunities to get involved in accelerator physics, can increase their skill and motivation. Giving operators a lead role in commissioning or start-up can result in a higher machine performance in everyday operation. How should we interact with machine physicists in order to benefit from each other’s knowledge and expertise? We would like to hear the experience from different labs.

6. Automation & Machine learning (Chair: Rossano Giachino)
New automated procedure and machine learning is massively surrounding us. Will “old ways” of operating particle accelerator become gradually obsolete? Will skill be lost when replaced by automatic procedures/machine learning? To which tasks can machine learning be applied? Speakers in this session should present recent examples on automation/machine learning and the impact on the control room operations.

7. Do we need flight simulators for accelerators? (Chair: Michael Bieler)
Accelerator performance is held to a high standard. This is very advantageous for the users, but becomes a problem for the troubleshooting capabilities of the operators. The airline industry, facing similar problems with their pilots, has introduced flight simulators to train their pilots. This session will focus on attempts to create fault simulators for accelerators, either as a stand-alone offline software tool, or using the real machine for fault recovery training.

8. Innovative solutions for Operations (Chair: Gregory Marr)
New technologies like smart homes are changing our private lifes. Communication tools are also transforming rapidly. Are we expecting similar changes in the control room? Robotics, interactive screens, voice communication, 3D and virtual displays are all examples of improvements possible in the near future. Give us your most recent innovation plans to upgrade to the technology of the future.

9. Operating accelerators in small organizations (Chair: Jun Xing)
This session is aimed to discuss unique operation problems arisen from running accelerators in small organizations, like medical facilities, university accelerators, and small divisions of other laboratories. With a small staff, operators need to handle all aspects of the facility without much technical support. How do you gain and keep enough knowledge and skills to run the machine?

10. System monitoring and Alarm response (Chair: Jon Bonofiglio)
As the complexity of accelerators and their support systems continue to advance, how do operations efficiently monitor and respond when abnormalities occur? What systems are monitored in the control room? Are only scientific equipment monitored, or are building and conventional support systems monitored as well? What type of alarms are produced and how is operations notified when these systems malfunction? Voice Alarms, E-mail Alerts, Text Alerts? Who makes the front line analysis of the failures when those alarms and alerts occur and how are support personnel contacted? Are the Alarm Monitoring functions on separate screens in the control room or are they part of the interfaces operations uses to control the accelerators?

11. Lessons Learned from unforeseen events (Chair: Violeta Toma)
One cannot foresee the unforeseeable but one can learn from unforeseen events. Incident prevention is strongly based on learning from previous incidents. Problems in reducing the number of incidents can be partly attributed to the failure to learn the lessons from incidents that had occurred. When incidents happen they raise awareness and understanding of things that went wrong, and perhaps can go wrong again. The challenge is to learn as much as possible about the causes of accidents and near misses that have already happened in order to prevent reoccurrence. When experiences of previous incidents are translated into preventive measures, future incidents of the same nature can be prevented. It is great to learn from one’s own incidents, it is even better to learn from somebody else’s. Tell us briefly about an incident at your facility and expand on the lessons you learnt from it.

12. Poster/Demo Sessions (Chair: Michael Bieler)
In addition to submitted talks, there will be a poster session, where attendees can contribute to the Workshop with a poster related to any of the session topics.

As a third alternative, we are also accepting a small number of submissions for live software demonstration. During the poster session we will provide a few display kiosks where you can demonstrate software, applications, web content, etc. from your facility. A brief written summary of your work is also required, so that we may record your contribution on the WAO website with the other posters and presentations for future reference.

13. Discussion Topics
Apart from individual presentations, there will be two discussion periods during the Workshop. One is an open forum where participants can raise any topics of interest; the second discussion session will be selected topics chosen prior to the discussion, with parallel sessions for attendees to choose.