2009-2010 Assessment of the Army Research Laboratory (2011) / Chapter Skim
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2 Computational and Information Sciences Directorate
2 Computational and Information Sciences Directorate
Pages 17-30
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From page 17... ...
, a continuing International Technology Alliance (ITA) on Network and Information Sciences, and a Mobile Network Modeling Institute.
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From page 18... ...
Areas that were deemed challenges in the previous ARLTAB report included a need for more of a systems engineering outlook in projects, validation and verification (V&V) of models and computer codes, an increasing need to perform sophisticated analyses and data mining on experimental data, and the need to find a way to leverage the work done to date on Blue Radio (especially how to achieve a single-chip implementation that could be used in a variety of systems)
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From page 19... ...
In particular, with a focus on interoperable data acquisition, processing, and metadata services, there is the potential to develop rich data collections that could not be developed otherwise. Addition ally, methods for data exploitation share many common algorithms related to clustering, classification, and network analysis that could benefit from shared approaches to scaling to bigger data sets through performance modeling and parallel computing.
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From page 20... ...
Social Network Construction from Unstructured Input, Information Fusion, and Analysis Over the past few years, the panel has encouraged CISD to explore computational tools to aid in performing social network analysis (SNA) based on intelligence and other data sources; in this sense a "social network" represents the relationships between humans.
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From page 21... ...
High-Performance Computing While managing some world-class computing facilities, the Advanced Computing and Computa tional Sciences Division has perhaps the least resources for research in all of CISD, in terms of both dollars and Ph.D.-level researchers. Given this limitation, in its previous report ARLTAB recommended that such resources as were available be focused on encouraging and developing an HPC capability in a much broader fashion than currently exists throughout ARL, and on developing software that ARL can take advantage of in future petaflops systems.
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From page 22... ...
OPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES Potential Crosscutting Issues Prior ARLTAB reports have suggested several technology issues that have cut across multiple ARL directorates, but with particular impact on CISD. Examples include advanced computing, networking
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From page 23... ...
, pro totyping, and verification and validation. The current report notes the commendable start of efforts that address several of these issues (advanced computing, information fusion, networking)
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From page 24... ...
The latter work (such as that on distributed information quality or component-based routing) had good Army motivation, but it seemed to define networks in a much more abstract sense than that used to establish NSD or the Mobile Network Modeling Institute, and it often seemed to be more closely related to Information Sciences Division problems than to networking issues.
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From page 25... ...
There is, however, an excellent roadmap in place for traditional weather-related work, and BED should consider fleshing out in that roadmap possible alternatives for these new areas. Challenges in Decision-Aiding Systems The work discussed above about social network analysis clearly is key to fusing information and aiding the warfighter in making decisions.
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From page 26... ...
Another example with respect to challenges in decision-aiding systems was an attempt to characterize team decision making (i.e., a human network) experimentally as a function of information loss and delay due to data network issues; an existing platform called ELICIT was used to represent information sources, servers, and decision makers, and validation of agent-based experiments was done through human-in-the-loop experiments.
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From page 27... ...
What are the lower-level details of the filters assumed? Challenges in System Engineering As noted in prior ARLTAB reports, it remains a significant challenge across CISD to ensure that even in relatively basic research programs a good understanding is formed about how potential systems that might be developed out of such research might be deployed and used in real Army scenarios.
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From page 28... ...
Data mining has emerged in the commercial world as key for applications ranging from determining personalized online purchase preferences to performing portfolio analyses. In this 2009-2010 review cycle, CISD described several projects to begin such efforts, including work on Hadoop -- the technique that has grown out of the Web search and services world to use large numbers of computers in an organized fashion to perform very fast unstructured searches on queries that are generated on the fly.
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From page 29... ...
In terms of the third criterion -- whether facilities and laboratory equipment are state of the art -- the answer is again the same as in prior years: a largely solid "Yes." In many cases, it is not necessarily the equipment but the planning for using that equipment more effectively that could benefit from additional attention. There is a continuing concern about using the appropriate numerical models, especially within the Mobile Network Modeling Institute.
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From page 30... ...
As noted in the previous ARLTAB report, although there seems to be a significant number of col laborations of various sorts, it is often not clear how those collaborations interact with ARL programs (versus simply being funded grants) , and what part of the results reported from the collaborations are due to ARL versus external researchers and contractors.
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