A method comprising: parsing configuration data of multiple applications (202, 202') associated with an industrial process control and automation system, and integrating the information associated with the multiple applications to link various sub-domain problems in the industrial process control and automation system, the configuration data identifying input variables and output variables associated with each application; generating input-output models associated with the applications based on the parsed configuration data, wherein each input-output model maps the input variables and the output variables associated with a corresponding one of the applications; performing structural analysis of various application configurations to build the input-output models in order to exploit multiple-level dependencies between the applications 202; analyzing dependency of the input-output model of each application to build an information network model by linking two or more of the input or output variables that are common among multiple ones of the input-output models to thereby identify relationships between the applications, wherein the dependency analysis of input-output models provides the sequence and direction of dependencies to generate the information network model; generating the information network model based on the linked variables, the information network model identifying the relationships between at least one of data elements, events or information associated to the applications; and storing the input-output models and the information network model in at least one memory (144, 150). parsing configuration data of multiple applications (202, 202') associated with an industrial process control and automation system, and integrating the information associated with the multiple applications to link various sub-domain problems in the industrial process control and automation system, the configuration data identifying input variables and output variables associated with each application; generating input-output models associated with the applications based on the parsed configuration data, wherein each input-output model maps the input variables and the output variables associated with a corresponding one of the applications; performing structural analysis of various application configurations to build the input-output models in order to exploit multiple-level dependencies between the applications 202; analyzing dependency of the input-output model of each application to build an information network model by linking two or more of the input or output variables that are common among multiple ones of the input-output models to thereby identify relationships between the applications, wherein the dependency analysis of input-output models provides the sequence and direction of dependencies to generate the information network model; generating the information network model based on the linked variables, the information network model identifying the relationships between at least one of data elements, events or information associated to the applications; and storing the input-output models and the information network model in at least one memory (144, 150).