Models and Methods: Catching Up to the 21st Century

摘要

Rapid advances in information technology over thernpast several decades have been a mixed blessing forrnmodeling and simulation. The field has made hugernadvances in the ability to harness computational powerrnand link critical resources through distributedrnarchitectures; however, the issue of designing modelsrnfor reuse or integration at various levels of resolutionrnremains. On a daily basis, we in the modeling andrnsimulation arena are asked to produce a syntheticrnreplica of any given part of our universe (from cellrnnucleation to space communication) at arbitrary andrnoften multiple levels of resolution to assess vastlyrndifferent problem. That alone is a daunting andrnunsolvable problem (reproduce the universe at any scalernfor any purpose – and do it now). To make life evenrnmore interesting, we are doing this using technology thatrnis evolving rapidly, providing us with new capabilities inrnnetworking, middleware and architectures as well as inrndata management. The temptation is to evolve thernmethods and tools independently of the problem spacesrn– because we can imagine how to employ these newrntechnologies. What is far more challenging is to retainrnall that technical knowledge and attempt to understandrnnew problem domains; the ones we have neglectedrnbecause they are outside our domain of experience andrnexhibit relationships that are “messier” than Newton’srnlaws. Imagining solutions to these problems is a bitrnharder. Thus the question: how do we capitalize on newrntechnology while stepping back for a moment to explorernthe solution space for modeling advances in fields wherernthe only knowledge we lack is the robust connectiverntissue – the relationships among critical parameters?