Grey Systems Education Seminar held in Pakistan

To celebrate the 40th birth anniversary of the Grey System Theory, the Grey Systems Society of Pakistan (GSSP) organized a Grey Systems Education Seminar in Lahore, Pakistan, on 28th November.

The event was chaired by Dr. Muhammad Nawaz, the Vice President of the GSSP and the Associate Editor of the International Journal of Grey Systems. Dr. Nawaz introduced the participants to the origin of the Grey System Theory in China and its development in China, Pakistan, and abroad. He highlighted the role played by Pakistani scholars in developing the Grey System Theory. He also read the hand-written letter written by Dr. Saad Ahmed Javed, the President of the GSSP, in which he encouraged the new generation of Pakistanis to learn new techniques and methods of data analysis, forecasting, and problem-solving. After the lecture by Dr. Nawaz, several students from the National College of Business Administration & Economics presented their works. Dr. Nawaz appreciated some of the works and encouraged them to be submitted to international journals.

More than twenty postgraduate students from Lahore participated in the event and asked interesting questions. In the end, Dr. Nawaz thanked the participants and encouraged them to read the works of Professors Deng Julong, Sifeng Liu, and S. A. Javed and further develop them with new ideas. He told the audience that the GSSP would continue holding such activities in the future to train a new generation of grey systems scientists.

Xinhua News published a report on Grey System Theory

On the 40th anniversary of the Grey System Theory, Xinhua News, a top Chinese newspaper, has published a report on the Grey System Theory and its application in aerospace and other equipment manufacturing. The report was prepared by Yang Binping, and was published on November 30, 2022. The English version of the report is shared below:

The 40th Anniversary of Grey System Theory of Applied Aerospace and Other Major Equipment

On Nov 29, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics (NUAA) held the opening ceremony of an exhibition to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the creation of Grey System Theory.

In 1982, Professor Deng Julong, a Chinese scholar, published his first paper on grey system theory, which marked the emergence of a new theory of grey system theory. What is grey system theory? Professor Sifeng Liu, a famous teacher of the national “Ten Thousand Talent Plan” and director of the Institute of Grey Systems Studies of NUAA, introduced that, colloquially speaking, the so-called grey system is between the white system and the black box. It’s not all known information like the white system, and it’s not all unknown information like the black box. Grey system is to extract valuable information through the mining and development of the “part” of known information, so as to achieve the correct description of system operation behavior and evolution law, so that people can use mathematical models to achieve the prediction, decision and optimization control of uncertain system with “poor information”. Professor Deng Julong established the grey system theory based on the in-depth research and exploration of the control problem of uncertain systems with poor information.

Sifeng Liu told reporters that major equipment such as aerospace has a significant “poor information” characteristic, “during the Second World War, aerospace equipment was manufactured in large quantities, people found that a lot of rockets, aircraft reliability is very low, some countries’ aircraft fell down more than others shot down, some rockets exploded on the take-off platform. Sifeng Liu said that in the face of major equipment reliability problems, scientists around the world carried out research, and the reliability growth model built by American scholars based on stochastic analysis theory has been widely adopted by countries around the world. In recent years, in the absence of sufficient data, Chinese scientists have tried to apply the method and model of grey system to solve the problem of reliability growth evaluation and prediction, and have innovated and developed the original local theory.

Academician Zhongde Shan, President of Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, said that the grey system theory, which was born in China, has formed a relatively perfect system structure in the 40 years of development through the unremitting efforts of several generations. It has been widely used to solve practical problems in the fields of natural science, social science and engineering technology, and has achieved a lot of application results in China and many countries in the world.

Up to now, scholars from more than 100 countries and regions have published more than 300,000 research and application papers on grey system theory, which has strongly promoted the innovation and development of various fields. The theory has been widely used in the development of major aerospace models, the application of mechanical engineering, power engineering, geotechnical engineering, hydrology, water resources and hydraulic engineering. Especially in the development of major aerospace models, it solved the problem of “poor information” data modeling and analysis for the development of COMAC C919 large passenger aircraft, ensuring the successful development of C919, perfect maiden flight and airworthiness evidence; It solved the problems of quality control and reliability test analysis of small data and poor information of Beijing Institute of Telemetry, and ensured the development progress, quality and reliability of Long March 5 and Long March 5B carrier rocket supporting products.

Springer book series on Grey Systems

• Want to publish your book? Then you are at right place

Springer Nature is the world’s largest publisher of books and monographs. Recently, Springer Nature has launched a book series on Grey System Theory. It is the world’s first book series on grey systems and grey models. It will publish recent developments by the grey systems scholars from China and abroad. Only English language works will be published.

• Want to know who are the editors?

Is there anyone who has not heard about Professor Sifeng Liu? Yeah, your guess is right! The Springer book series will be edited by professors Sifeng Liu and his two trusted comrades. Thus, now when you are submitting your book proposal to Springer, you rest assure it would be handled by a competent editorial board headed by Professors Sifeng Liu (Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, China), Yingjie Yang (De Montfort University, UK) and Jeffrey Yi-Lin Forrest (Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania, USA), the three top notch leaders of grey systems community. Isn’t it cool?

• How to begin?

Yes, that’s an important question. The first thing is to write nice plagiarism-free book. Then download this proposal form and submit to the Springer Publishing Editor Emily Zhang, who will first read it and see whether your proposal is nice or not. She would provide you with all necessary support you are looking for. So, don’t worry and just go ahead!

Best of luck, dudes!