The current Information Society is a model of society where the information sector predominates, evaluated both in terms of the percentage of the active population employed in it and as a contribution in shaping the Gross Domestic Product. Technological progress now allows processing, storing, retrieving and communicating information in any format, without restrictions of distance, time and volume. This revolution brings new capabilities to human intelligence and constitutes a resource that modifies the current ways of working and living in community.
Both the European Commission and the governments of the rest of the developed countries have opted to promote the development of ICTs and define the priorities for research and development in this sector, based on new uses and the idea that only one Wide dissemination of the uses of new technologies within society can be transformed into innovations.
In the different countries, emblematic programs have been launched in recent years aiming to apply, in a relatively short period of time, different innovative technologies that are fundamental and strategic for the future and that, in addition, contribute jointly to the development of relevant and attractive applications. . To do this, they have to stimulate the imagination, arouse creation, desire and dreams, and show great ambition to respond to society’s expectations.
The concept of the Information Society has progressively added the idea of a Knowledge Society, a concept linked to the new ways of working imposed by ICT, which allows to talk about the transition from an industrial society to a knowledge society.
In this context, Information Engineering is an activity resulting from the impact of Information Technologies on the activities developed in the field of information in a traditional way, it can be considered as a logical extension of this set of tasks directed to the resolution of the problems presented by the integration of systems of multiple nature. It covers the entire life cycle of information and automated information management systems.
The design of information products and services based on computer systems must take into account the environment in which the user’s activity takes place, and at the same time, the content of the information must be adaptable and portable to new systems that may arise from the technological development. The objective of Information Engineering is to systematize the development process of automated information systems, to achieve better quality systems, and, ultimately, to increase the value of information.
The concept of Information Engineering is closely linked to the concepts of Systems Engineering, Software Engineering and Web Engineering, since information is currently managed through computer systems, which require a complex and quality software for operate, and that are accessible through the Web.
If we take into account that a large part of the information managed by the information systems represents knowledge, that is, it is the way to register and store the knowledge, it is reasonable that in a doctoral program the combination of the disciplines of Engineering of Information and Knowledge Engineering, one of whose objectives is to represent human knowledge and reasoning in a given domain, within an artificial system; but also the generation of new knowledge, which did not exist before, from the information contained, for example, in databases or documents, such as data mining or machine learning.
Like the Information Engineering, also the Engineering of the Knowledge, for being an engineering, it must use techniques and methodologies of quantitative and instrumental character, as well as methods and computational techniques used in all the fields of knowledge as the Telecommunications, Computer, Economy, Health sciences, Education, etc., which should be the object of research.
The importance and scientific interest of the proposed doctoral program is evidenced by the fact that in the last national scientific research plans, a strategic action related to the Information and Knowledge Society is established, whose objective is “to achieve the adequate development and use of the technologies, applications, services and contents of the Information Society to contribute to the success of a model of economic growth based on the increase of competitiveness and productivity, the promotion of social and regional equality, the universal accessibility and the improvement of the well-being and the quality of life of the citizens “.