The study scope， delegates， working groups and annual meeting arrangement of CIGRE SC B5—protection and automation are treated first. For the CIGRE Session 2012， preferential subjects for the B5 session are the impact of future network components of coordination between protection and automation systems; utilization and application of remote access for protection and automation systems. A new protection scheme is required for application of flexible ac/dc transmission equipments， and meshed distribution network with dispersed generation; automatic verification tools are needed for protection in complex grid， and for adaptive relay protection. The next generation of smart substation has to be studied in order to further realize the data and information sharing， protection and automation function integration， utilization of non-conventional instrument transformer and process bus， in the mean time the security and reliability of the system has to be kept at least at the same level. Along with the network topology changes， the traditional stability control system may gradually transfer from off-line study based open-loop emergency control to on-line study based open-loop emergency control. In order to reduce life-time cost and improve overall operating efficiency， in addition to SCADA data， exchange ofnon real-time data” ornon operation data” between substation and control center will become more and more important， including the application in fault analysis， asset management， operation and so on. Based on the universal IEC 61850 standard， the communication channel and the communication protocol of remote access should comprehensively be designed， while cyber security issues should be solved.