Actually, we're beyond OUO! Which means all topics can be discussed completely openly - that was a leftover from our LANL version of the same talk.
Burritos? Wow. We got water at LANL... :) Cheers, Laura -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Stephen Guerin Sent: Monday, October 30, 2006 5:05 PM To: [email protected] Subject: [FRIAM] Lecture Nov 1 12p: Laura McNamara and Timothy Trucano *** special time: 12p *** SPEAKERs: Laura A. McNamara and Timothy G. Trucano Sandia National Laboratories TITLE: Epistemological Issues in Computational Modeling and Simulation and High Consequence Decision-Making TIME: Wed Nov 1, 2006 12:00p ** note special time LOCATION: 624 Agua Fria Conference Room We will have breakfast burrittos with the speakers at Dominics at 10:30a. Everyone invited. No lunch will be provided. ABSTRACT: Since the end of the Cold war, the US intelligence community has faced criticism for repeatedly failing to predict major international events: the end of the Cold war, India and Pakistan's nuclear tests, terrorist activities within and outside the United States. In response, institutions in the IC have been looking for methodologies and technologies to improve performance in the collection and analysis of intelligence information. In particular, the IC's analytical community is looking to modeling and simulation tools to revolutionize intelligence analysis, enabling the collective to bridge information gaps and promote knowledge discovery across (or perhaps despite) intellectual, political, and organizational boundaries. This situation is not dissimilar to the crisis that the nuclear weapons laboratories faced in the early 1990s, when the Hatfield Amendment killed the testing program and the DOE introduced Science Based Stockpile Stewardship as the new paradigm for assessing and certifying the safety, security, and reliability of the nuclear stockpile. In particular, both the nuclear weapons and intelligence communities have invested in modeling and simulation technologies for their capacity to synthesize large amounts of information in relatively short periods of time, and for their predictive promise. However, as the nuclear weapons laboratories have discovered, predictive capability is a hard thing to attain, and modeling and simulation tools often raise more questions than they answer. In this talk, we argue that the intelligence community and the nuclear weapons laboratories are facing remarkably similar challenges in developing, assessing, and integrating modeling and simulation tools into their mission activities. In particular, epistemological issues that tend to remain latent in academic research environments get thrown into high relief when information generated by modeling and simulation tools contributes to high consequence decisions. We illustrate this point by reviewing research on modeling and simulation, knowledge production, and prediction in economics, weather forecasting, climate modeling. We then present case studies from the nuclear weapons programs and the intelligence community, both of which reveal the close coupling between technology and organizational dynamics that characterizes modeling and simulation in high-consequence decision making. This talk is the outcome of two years' worth of discussion and collaboration between Trucano, a mathematician who has spent his career in computational physics at Sandia National Laboratories; and McNamara, a cultural anthropologist who has studied knowledge production in both the nuclear weapons and the intelligence communities. All topics will be discussed at the OUO level. -------------------------------------------------------- editors note: I had to look up "OUO" If you enjoy the Oxford University Orchestra, this talk may be perfect for you. Or perhaps you're a fan of OUO, an ex Zimbabwe-Legit Hip Hop band that recently dropped some heat on Hollywood Basic a year ago. Founded by Akim the Funk Buddha, Dumi Right and their cousin Pep. http://www.africasgateway.com/article-print-295.html Or it's "Of Unknown Origin" though we assume Laura and Tim created the talk... okay, it's quite probably "Official Use Only": identifying certain unclassified but sensitive Department of Energy information that may be exempt from public release under the Freedom of Information Act ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
