Evidence-Based Policy Making / Decision Support Luis Furlan Director, Center for Studies in Applied Informatics – Universidad del Valle de Guatemala Kevin Franklin Executive Director - Institute for Computational Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences – ICHASS Danny Powell Executive Director - National Center for Supercomputing Applications – NCSA March 10-11, 2015
Global Core Societal Issues Protection and management of water and the environment Food safety and agriculture efficiency Tackling poverty and improving income distribution Hazard / Resilience Planning Energy management Transportation and infrastructure management Public Safety, Public Health, Education Urban Planning National Center for Supercomputing Applications - NCSA
A Key Complication - Inter-Dependencies Public Health Environmental Management Food Security Transportation Energy Education Economy Tourism Water Resources Hazard Risk Management Housing Public Safety Utility Infrastructure Quality of Life Urban Planning National Center for Supercomputing Applications - NCSA
Two Decision Support Projects – We Are Inviting Collaboration Community Resilience Center of Excellence A Consortium of 10 Universities Led by Colorado State University Funded by NIST - National Institute of Standards and Technology (U.S. Department of Commerce) Ergo – Hazard risk mitigation/ planning/recovery system Decision support system for policy planners as well as researchers. Basis for a global, open source consortium -13 countries, including Trinidad (Seismic Research Center) and Jamaica (UWI –Institute for Sustainable Development) National Center for Supercomputing Applications - NCSA
1 st Project: Community Resilience Center of Excellence $20 million, 5 year project Goal: create a decision support system for community resilience following a hazardous event Led by Colorado State University. 10 universities, 31 senior researchers Awarded: one out of 28 team applications. The centerpiece - a computational environment called NIST-CORE, An integrated decision support tool for policy makers Multiple system models, multiple data sets NIST-CORE will be built on Ergo (the other project I mentioned) Expanding its functionalities Open source – freely available
National Center for Supercomputing Applications - NCSA 2 nd Project: Ergo - A decision support system for professional risk planners, emergency responders, and disciplinary researchers, integrating a broad range of data to produce a detailed assessment of the potential impact of natural and man-made hazards 11+ years of development - tested, evaluated, proven Used in multiple countries – now an open source consortium Austria, China, Chile, New Zealand, South Korea, Trinidad, Jamaica, Lebanon, Turkey, US, UK, Greece, Italy, others … Reviewed by 2014 World Bank study Over 80 open source systems were considered in the evaluation “It is easily the best software for scenario risk assessment and decision support (mitigation, benefit-cost).” Web_Version-rev-1.1.pdf
National Center for Supercomputing Applications - NCSA Proposal – Request for Participation Participate with the US Community Resilience Center of Excellence. Participate in defining the use cases of NIST-CORE – influence its development Discuss possible collaborations and funding opportunities Review Ergo as a potential platform for your Hazard Assessment/ Planning / Response efforts Trinidad (UWI – Seismic Research Center), and Jamaica (UWI - Institute for Sustainable Development) currently use Ergo, others (Costa Rica, Guatemala, Chile) have expressed strong interest Ergo is open source, freely available to anyone who wants to use it (For those who are interested, we will collaborate with OAS to organize and set these meetings?) Contact: Danny Powell
National Center for Supercomputing Applications - NCSA Thank you! Helping to secure our future.