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
Environmental Management
Public Health
Hazard Risk Management
Food Security
Energy
Transportation
Housing
Water Resources
Education
Economy
Tourism
Urban Planning
Utility Infrastructure
Public Safety
Quality of Life
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
1st 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
2nd Project:
Ergo - http://ergo.ncsa.illinois.edu/
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).”
http://www.gfdrr.org/sites/gfdrr/files/publication/UR-Software_ReviewWeb_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 (danny@ncsa.illinois.edu)
National Center for Supercomputing Applications - NCSA
Thank you!
Helping to secure our future.
National Center for Supercomputing Applications - NCSA