The proposed collaboration will pool the expertise at UTRC, which is based in Cork, in the area of access control with Lero's expertise in software engineering of secure systems. The aim of the collaboration is to investigate systematic and novel techniques for more effective physical access control.

Prof Bashar Nuseibeh, chief scientist of Lero, will lead its activities during the alliance.

Nuseibeh said the proposed research will look at the feasibility for applying adaptive software design techniques to provide more "flexible and robust access control to modern smart buildings" that would feature pervasive technologies, such as wireless sensor networks.

"Security is critical to organisations whose businesses are distributed across multiple physical locations and whose security needs change depending on the nature of the work being conducted and the personnel involved," said John Milton-Benoit, general manager of UTRC Ireland.

"The research efforts proposed to be undertaken with Lero promises to provide improved ability to dynamically configure and reconfigure access to the physical and information resources managed by such organisations," he said.