Early in 2002, Director of International Projects of Thales Research & Technology, Dick Arnold, launched the idea for the construction of a research lab that could exploit the collaboration of the three types of knowledge providers in Dutch society: the universities, the technology institutes and the industry. The vision was a cooperative research facility around a common theme that can serve as a bridge between scientific disciplines and also as an anchoring point for a system oriented and innovation driven research portfolio.

Consultation with several research professors at several universities and directors of technology institutes resulted in August 2002 in a little ceremony at the Delft University of Technology where the cooperation agreement that founded the D-CIS Lab, was signed by members of their boards of directors of Thales Nederland, TNO, the University of Amsterdam and the Delft University of Technology. As managing director dr. Kees Nieuwenhuis, from Thales Nederland, was appointed. From 2003 onwards, the partnership has been growing steadily in terms of researchers of the partner institutions contributing to the work on the strategic research agenda. Because D-CIS is an open platform, the research is conducted in projects that include many more partners than the D-CIS partners themselves.

In 2009 the partnership was officially extended with two other partners: the University of Tilburg, School of Humanities (with as active partner the TiCC) and the Neural Networks Foundation from Nijmegen. At the end of 2009 TNO is no longer acting as a D-CIS partner. D-CIS is, as always, interested in extending the partnership.

Research goal

The D-CIS Lab’s research goal is to become a centre of knowledge & expertise on Actor-Agent Communities. The definition of the term AAC represents a paradigm shift for the design of complex information systems. D-CIS focuses  on the use of AAcs in the field of Collaborative Decision Making solutions. The aim is to build a recognized position in the European research community.

The research on AACs contains a great many topics from various well known research disciplines, both in science and technology. Currently, the main research topics at D-CIS are Collaborative Decision Making processes and techniques, Multi Agent Systems Technology, Human Cognitive Performance Factors, Cognitive Capabilities and relevant Information Systems Architectures. These topics can be mapped, part-wise or completely, on the research portfolios of the D-CIS partners and they form the structuring elements for the Joint Program of Activities (JPA). The JPA was the second step in the evolution towards an integrated open partners platform with one Strategic Research Agenda. The first SRA was reviewed and approved in 2007.

To implement the strategy of an open and growing platform and muster the necessary critical mass, it is estimated that D-CIS Lab should 'manage' manpower in the order of 70 to 100 fte’s. on a yearly basis. At the same time, the number of partners must increase from the current 5 to at least 10 in the Netherlands. To implement this strategy, D-CIS Lab will concentrate on three main activities:

• Research and applied research
• Collaboration and networking 
• Communication and demonstration 

To implement the last two activities D-CIS has chosen a focused single expertise domain approach to “validate” and “market” its knowledge and technology. This application domain is Disaster and Crisis Management.