ITR, ENG and Cyberinfrastructure

1. ITR, ENG and Cyberinfrastructure Priscilla Nelson Senior Advisor Directorate for Engineering ENG ITR Grantees Workshop June 10 and 11, 2004

2. Engineering Research Is Changing Geographically dispersed resources and collaborations are the new foundations of science and engineering research and education

3. These Resources and Collaborations Are Enabled by Cyberinfrastructure • Vision is encapsulated in “the Atkins report.” • Calls for a national, reliable and dynamic, interoperable and integrated system of hardware, software, and data resources and services. • This new infrastructure would open the door to new types of scientific/engineering research and education.

4. ENG Working Definition for CI Cyberinfrastructure is a national network of resources that: • provides broad and easy access to shared and maintained repositories for data, models, and tools. • includes connectivity with shared resources for experimentation and computation. • enables reliable visualization and information extraction from multimedia data resources and libraries. • supports real-time data flows and distributed collaboration. • ensures that applications and domain communities can form and grow, and that efforts develop with interoperability.

5. Bottom Line Assertion If we need the nation’s civil infrastructure for success in the industrial economy, then Cyberinfrastructure will be necessary for success in the knowledge economy of the future.

6. What are NSF and ENG Currently Doing? NSF Investments in IT Infrastructure • Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation • Protein Databank • International Integrated Microdata Access System • Partnerships for Advanced Computational Infrastructure • Circumarctic Environmental Observatory Network • National Science Digital Library • Pacific Rim GRID Middleware • Geosciences Network • International Virtual Data Grid Laboratory • Grid Research and Applications Development .. and others too numerous to mention (~$400M in FY’04) In ENG, the Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation (NEES) is developing a cyberinfrastructure for earthquake engineering. Future CI community investments are planned in NNIN and CLEANER.

7. Cross-Engineering Areas of CI Investment On the order of 30 to 40% of the ENG budget has been invested in CI-related projects, including research, education and community development over the past few years. ENG completed a portfolio analysis and identified several areas for investments that extend across all disciplines in ENG (and across disciplines in NSF as well) • Integrated Computational Science and Engineering • Shared Physical Resources and Testbeds • Data Repositories and Tools • Collaboration in Knowledge-based Environments • Advances in Devices, Processors and Communications

8. The Roles of ENG ENG has a three-fold role regarding CI: • ENG researchers and educators create the CI resources and connectivity needed to exploit and extend our CI capabilities. • Community development in ENG research and education will introduce culture changes and establish requirements for CI performance. • ENG research and education communities will engage the CI as a 21st century platform for discovery and innovation. And - engineers provide the technologies, systems and operations knowledge needed to design and construct the CI as the reliableinfrastructure it must become.

9. Possible FY05 ENG Investments Cyberinfrastructure and critical infrastructures: • Develop of collaborative environments for research on convergence of critical physical and information infrastructures – a multidisciplinary national need. • Physical and information infrastructures include electric power, communications, transportation, water, supply chain, manufacturing, health care, etc. • The next generation of infrastructures will be smart and require integrating sensor networks with new data driven analysis, decision and control. • Large-scale models with real time distributed data. • Database developments for new and legacy data, real-time flux.

10. Possible FY05 ENG Investments Multiscale and multiprocess integrated computational simulation: • Develop multiscale and multiprocess open source and interoperable computational simulation resources, with resources developed in concert with development of an applications platform as part of a CI system, and with seamless interfaces with data resources. Programmatic investments that underpin the development and evolution of cyberinfrastructure: • The next generation of infrastructures will be smart and require integrating sensor networks with new data driven analysis, decision and control. • Model developments for distributed systems. • Database developments for new and legacy data, real-time flux.

11. Challenging Context • Cyberinfrastructure Ecology • Technological change more rapid than organizational change • Disruptive technology promises unforeseen opportunity • Seamless Integration of New and Old • Balancing upgrades of existing and creation of new resources • Legacy instruments, models, data, methodologies • Broadening Participation • Community-Building • Cross-agency coordination

12. Focus on Policy and Social Dynamics • Policy issues must be considered up front • Social engineering will be at least as important as software engineering • Well-defined interfaces will be critical for successful software development • Application communities will need to participate from the beginning