# Presentation: 688246

## ITR, ENG and Cyberinfrastructure

- Priscilla Nelson
- Senior Advisor
- Directorate for Engineering

- ENG ITR Grantees Workshop
- June 10 and 11, 2004

## Engineering Research Is Changing

- Geographically dispersed resources and collaborations are the new foundations of science and engineering research and education

## 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.

## 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.

## 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.

## 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.

## 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

**Notes:**
Priscilla and I have tried to organize the current ENG portfolio into four major threads, with significant investments within several sub-threads

## 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 _reliable_ _infrastructure_ it must become.

## 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.

## 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.

## 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

**Notes:**
ETF resource partners include the original 5 sites: SDSC, CACR, NCSA, ANL and PSC plus any additional sites that are connected as a result of the Terascale Extensions Program.

## 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