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Suggested Citation:"Front Matter." National Research Council. 1996. Computing and Communications in the Extreme: Research for Crisis Management and Other Applications. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5280.
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Computing and Communications in the Extreme

Research for Crisis Management and Other Applications

Steering Committee, Workshop Series on High Performance Computing and Communications

Computer Science and Telecommunications Board

Commission on Physical Sciences, Mathematics, and Applications

National Research Council



National Academy Press
Washington, D.C. 1996

Suggested Citation:"Front Matter." National Research Council. 1996. Computing and Communications in the Extreme: Research for Crisis Management and Other Applications. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5280.
×

NOTICE: The project that is the subject of this report was approved by the Governing Board of the National Research Council, whose members are drawn from the councils of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine. The members of the steering committee responsible for the report were chosen for their special competences and with regard for appropriate balance.

This report has been reviewed by a group other than the authors according to procedures approved by a Report Review Committee consisting of members of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine .

Support for this project was provided by the Department of the Navy, Office of the Chief of Naval Research, under grant number N00014-93-1-0166. The project was conducted at the request of the Department of Defense, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. The content of this workshop report does not necessarily reflect the position or the policy of the federal government, and no official endorsement should be inferred.

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 96-60885

International Standard Book Number 0-309-05540-7

Additional copies of this report are available from:

National Academy Press
2101 Constitution Avenue, N.W.
Box 285
Washington, DC 20055
800-624-6242
202-334-3313 (in the Washington Metropolitan Area)

Copyright 1996 by the National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.

Printed in the United States of America

On the cover: A photograph provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency shows urban search and rescue workers in action at the Alfred P. Murrah Building in Oklahoma City, April 1995. A computer graphic produced by the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, depicts a simulation of Hurricane Emily off the North Carolina Coast, September 1993.

Suggested Citation:"Front Matter." National Research Council. 1996. Computing and Communications in the Extreme: Research for Crisis Management and Other Applications. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5280.
×

STEERING COMMITTEE, WORKSHOP SERIES ON HIGH PERFORMANCE COMPUTING AND COMMUNICATIONS

KEN KENNEDY,

Rice University,

Chair

FRANCES E. ALLEN,

IBM T.J. Watson Research Center

VINTON G. CERF,

MCI Telecommunications

GEOFFREY FOX,

Syracuse University

WILLIAM L. SCHERLIS,

Carnegie Mellon University

BURTON SMITH,

Tera Computer Company

KAREN R. SOLLINS,

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Staff

MARJORY S. BLUMENTHAL, Director

JAMES E. MALLORY, Program Officer (through April 1995)

JOHN M. GODFREY, Research Associate

GAIL E. PRITCHARD, Project Assistant

Suggested Citation:"Front Matter." National Research Council. 1996. Computing and Communications in the Extreme: Research for Crisis Management and Other Applications. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5280.
×

COMPUTER SCIENCE AND TELECOMMUNICATIONS BOARD

WILLIAM A. WULF,

University of Virginia,

Chair

FRANCES E. ALLEN,

IBM T.J. Watson Research Center

DAVID D. CLARK,

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

JEFF DOZIER,

University of California, Santa Barbara

HENRY FUCHS,

University of North Carolina

CHARLES GESCHKE,

Adobe Systems Incorporated

JAMES GRAY,

Microsoft Corporation

BARBARA GROSZ,

Harvard University

JURIS HARTMANIS,

Cornell University

DEBORAH A. JOSEPH,

University of Wisconsin

BUTLER W. LAMPSON,

Microsoft Corporation

BARBARA LISKOV,

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

JOHN MAJOR,

Motorola

ROBERT L. MARTIN,

AT&T Network Systems

DAVID G. MESSERSCHMITT,

University of California, Berkeley

WILLIAM H. PRESS,

Harvard University

CHARLES L. SEITZ,

Myricom Incorporated

EDWARD H. SHORTLIFFE,

Stanford University School of Medicine

CASIMIR S. SKRZYPCZAK,

NYNEX Corporation

LESLIE L. VADASZ,

Intel Corporation


MARJORY S. BLUMENTHAL, Director

HERBERT S. LIN, Senior Staff Officer

PAUL SEMENZA, Staff Officer

JERRY R. SHEEHAN, Staff Officer

JEAN E. SMITH, Program Associate

JOHN M. GODFREY, Research Associate

LESLIE M. WADE, Research Assistant

GLORIA P. BEMAH, Administrative Assistant

GAIL E. PRITCHARD, Project Assistant

Suggested Citation:"Front Matter." National Research Council. 1996. Computing and Communications in the Extreme: Research for Crisis Management and Other Applications. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5280.
×

COMMISSION ON PHYSICAL SCIENCES, MATHEMATICS, AND APPLICATIONS

ROBERT J. HERMANN,

United Technologies Corporation,

Chair

PETER M. BANKS,

Environmental Research Institute of Michigan

SYLVIA T. CEYER,

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

L. LOUIS HEGEDUS,

W.R. Grace and Company (retired)

JOHN E. HOPCROFT,

Cornell University

RHONDA J. HUGHES,

Bryn Mawr College

SHIRLEY A. JACKSON,

U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission

KENNETH I. KELLERMANN,

National Radio Astronomy Observatory

KEN KENNEDY,

Rice University

THOMAS A. PRINCE,

California Institute of Technology

JEROME SACKS,

National Institute of Statistical Sciences

L.E. SCRIVEN,

University of Colorado

LEON T. SILVER,

California Institute of Technology

CHARLES P. SLICHTER,

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

ALVIN W. TRIVELPIECE,

Oak Ridge National Laboratory

SAMUEL WINOGRAD,

IBM T.J. Watson Research Center

CHARLES A. ZRAKET,

MITRE Corporation (retired)


NORMAN METZGER, Executive Director

Suggested Citation:"Front Matter." National Research Council. 1996. Computing and Communications in the Extreme: Research for Crisis Management and Other Applications. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5280.
×

The National Academy of Sciences is a private, nonprofit, self-perpetuating society of distinguished scholars engaged in scientific and engineering research, dedicated to the furtherance of science and technology and to their use for the general welfare. Upon the authority of the charter granted to it by Congress in 1863, the Academy has a mandate that requires it to advise the federal government on scientific and technical matters. Dr. Bruce Alberts is president of the National Academy of Sciences.

The National Academy of Engineering was established in 1964, under the charter of the National Academy of Sciences, as a parallel organization of outstanding engineers. It is autonomous in its administration and in the selection of its members, sharing with the National Academy of Sciences the responsibility for advising the federal government. The National Academy of Engineering also sponsors engineering programs aimed at meeting national needs, encourages education and research, and recognizes the superior achievements of engineers. Dr. Harold Liebowitz is president of the National Academy of Engineering.

The Institute of Medicine was established in 1970 by the National Academy of Sciences to secure the services of eminent members of appropriate professions in the examination of policy matters pertaining to the health of the public. The Institute acts under the responsibility given to the National Academy of Sciences by its congressional charter to be an adviser to the federal government and, upon its own initiative, to identify issues of medical care, research, and education. Dr. Kenneth I. Shine is president of the Institute of Medicine.

The National Research Council was organized by the National Academy of Sciences in 1916 to associate the broad community of science and technology with the Academy's purposes of furthering knowledge and advising the federal government. Functioning in accordance with general policies determined by the Academy, the Council has become the principal operating agency of both the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering in providing services to the federal government, the public, and the scientific and engineering communities. The Council is administered jointly by both Academies and the Institute of Medicine. Dr. Bruce Alberts and Dr. Harold Liebowitz are chairman and vice chairman, respectively, of the National Research Council.

Suggested Citation:"Front Matter." National Research Council. 1996. Computing and Communications in the Extreme: Research for Crisis Management and Other Applications. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5280.
×

Preface

From August 1994 to August 1995, the National Research Council's (NRC's) Computer Science and Telecommunications Board conducted a series of three workshops on research issues in high-performance computing and communications. The goal of the series w as to bring together specialists in selected, nationally important application areas and researchers from the high-performance computing and communications (HPCC) research community to explore unmet technology needs and their implications for research. The workshops were held at the request of the Department of Defense, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). They also drew on the interest and input of other agencies that are major supporters of HPCC research, in particular the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The agendas and participant lists for Workshops I through III are given in Appendix A.

The applications discussed in the workshops were selected both for their importance to economic and societal goals and for the diversity of challenges they pose for computing and communications research. The first workshop was held in August 1994 at the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Center of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering in Irvine, California. It considered applications in four areas of national importance: manufacturing (e.g., simulation, collaborative design) ; health care (e.g., computerized patient records, medical information, telemedicine); digital libraries (e.g., electronic storage, search and retrieval of multiple forms of information); and electronic commerce and banking (e.g., secure, distributed transactions).

Although significant insights were gained from examining this broad set of

Page viii Cite
Suggested Citation:"Front Matter." National Research Council. 1996. Computing and Communications in the Extreme: Research for Crisis Management and Other Applications. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5280.
×

applications, the steering committee decided to explore a single application area in detail to enhance understanding of computing and communications requirements both for that area and for national applications in general. In consultation with DARPA, the steering committee selected crisis management for focused study. Crisis management incorporates preparation for, response to, and recovery from natural and technological disasters such as hurricanes, earthquakes, and oil spills; political-military crises; and related emergencies. Crisis management seemed an ideal focus because its diverse problems create demands for a number of different high-performance technologies. These range from high-performance computation to high-bandwidth, intelligent, and secure communications and information systems, as well as tools to support decision making and management of distributed groups of actors in a complex, uncertain, and rapidly changing environment (analogous to command and control in military operations). Crisis management also provides a context for evaluating both where specifically high-performance technologies can make a significant contribution and where knowledge gained from research can lead to valuable advances in more mainstream (i.e., nonhigh-performance) technologies.

The second workshop, held at the Beckman Center in June 1995, examined the problems presented by crisis management and the strengths and shortcomings of existing computing and communications technologies for addressing them. Both civil and military crisis management were considered, although civil applications received more attention. The steering committee and workshop participants found crisis management to be an especially fruitful source of research topics that have the potential to advance the state of computing and communications on a broad front, in addition to meeting some of the pressing technology needs of civilian and military crisis managers.

The final workshop, held in August 1995 at the National Academy of Sciences Building in Washington, D.C., focused on defining key research opportunities that should be pursued to meet the needs of application areas addressed in the first two workshops . That workshop continued the emphasis on crisis management but also revisited the other application areas from the first workshop as additional sources of input and as a test of the generality of conclusions about crisis management needs.

This report synthesizes and elaborates on what was learned in the three workshops. The steering committee emphasizes that it was not the goal of the series to provide recommendations on how to solve the specific problems of crisis management and other application areas in the nation today. Solving crisis management problems such as slow or incomplete delivery of food, medicine, information, and financial assistance to people affected by a disaster requires resources, expertise, and effort in many areas in addition to computing and communications (e.g., effort to address budget constraints for local and state crisis management agencies, interagency coordination, personnel training). Rather, the workshops' goal was to explore applications to gain insights into problems that

Suggested Citation:"Front Matter." National Research Council. 1996. Computing and Communications in the Extreme: Research for Crisis Management and Other Applications. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5280.
×

computing and communications research could address, thereby helping to alleviate, with more capable or cheaper technologies, problems faced in crisis management and other nationally important application areas. In that respect the workshops proved to be a rich source of ideas for the research community to consider.

The steering committee for the Workshop Series on High Performance Computing and Communications acknowledges the contributions of the workshop speakers and participants. Their insights and creativity were central to this effort. We especially thank James Beauchamp, of the U.S. Commander in Chief, Pacific Command (CINCPAC); John Hwang, Federal Emergency Management Agency; Robert Kehlet, Defense Nuclear Agency; David Kehrlein, Office of Emergency Services, State of California; and Lois Clark McCoy, National Institute of Urban Search and Rescue, as well as other crisis management professionals who educated, stimulated, and challenged a diverse group of computing and communications researchers. In addition, workshop participants Joel Saltz, of the University of Maryland, and Clifford Lynch, of the Office of the President, University of California, made valuable written contributions to the final report.

The steering committee also thanks the NRC staff for their diligent assistance throughout the workshop series and preparation of the final report, including Marjory Blumenthal, John Godfrey, Gail Pritchard, and James Mallory. The steering committee and I are especially grateful to John Godfrey for his resourcefulness in identifying experts and information sources and his conscientious assistance in developing this report. His efforts to attract both crisis management and computing experts to join in this collaborative project and his consistent support in integrating materials and ideas from both perspectives were key to the successful outcome of this project. Gail Pritchard's assistance in ensuring the smooth running of the workshops and providing organizational support to the steering committee was also essential and much appreciated. Finally, the steering committee is grateful to the anonymous reviewers for helping to sharpen and improve the report through their comments. Responsibility for the report remains with the steering committee.

Ken Kennedy, Chair

Steering Committee, Workshop Series on High Performance Computing and Communications

Suggested Citation:"Front Matter." National Research Council. 1996. Computing and Communications in the Extreme: Research for Crisis Management and Other Applications. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5280.
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Suggested Citation:"Front Matter." National Research Council. 1996. Computing and Communications in the Extreme: Research for Crisis Management and Other Applications. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5280.
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Suggested Citation:"Front Matter." National Research Council. 1996. Computing and Communications in the Extreme: Research for Crisis Management and Other Applications. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5280.
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Discovery of Resources

 

68

   

Virtual Subnetworks

 

68

   

Computation: Distributed Computing

 

69

   

Modeling and Simulation

 

70

   

Mobility of Computation and Data

 

72

   

Storage Servers and Meta-Data

 

73

   

Anomaly Detection and Inference of Missing Data

 

75

   

Sensors and Data Collection

 

75

   

Distributed Resource Management

 

77

   

Software System Development

 

78

   

Information Management: Finding and Integrating Resources

 

81

   

Integration and Location

 

84

   

Meta-Data and Types

 

88

   

Production and Value

 

89

   

Distribution and Relocation

 

90

   

User-centered Systems: Designing Applications to Work with People

 

91

   

Human-centered Systems and Interfaces

 

91

   

Collaboration and Virtual Organizations

 

93

   

Judgment Support

 

95

   

Notes

 

97

3

 

SUMMARY AND FINDINGS: RESEARCH FOR NATIONAL-SCALE APPLICATIONS

 

99

   

Research Challenges of Crisis Management

 

99

   

Technology Deployment and Research Progress

 

107

   

Finding 1: Crisis Management Testbeds

 

109

   

Finding 2: Studies of Existing National-scale Information Infrastructure

 

111

   

Support of Human Activities

 

112

   

Finding 3: Usability

 

113

   

Finding 4: Collaboration

 

116

   

System Composability and Interoperability

 

117

   

Finding 5: Focused Standards

 

118

   

Finding 6: Interoperability

 

122

   

Finding 7: Integration of Software Components

 

124

   

Finding 8: Legacy and Longevity

 

126

   

Adapting to Uncertainty and Change

 

130

   

Finding 9: Adaptivity

 

130

   

Finding 10: Reliability

 

134

   

Performance of Distributed Systems

 

136

   

Finding 11: Performance of Distributed Systems

 

136

   

Notes

 

137

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This book synthesizes the findings of three workshops on research issues in high-performance computing and communications (HPCC). It focuses on the role that computing and communications can play in supporting federal, state, and local emergency management officials who deal with natural and man-made hazards (e.g., toxic spills, terrorist bombings). The volume also identifies specific research challenges for HPCC in meeting unmet technology needs in crisis management and other nationally important application areas, such as manufacturing, health care, digital libraries, and electronic commerce and banking.

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