This site has been established to serve as a repository for a variety of activities now ongoing dedicated to the topic of "Grand Challenges" for modeling and simulation.

Why Grand Challenges?

One of the better aspects of human nature is our drive to seek out and conquer challenges. We seem imbued with a desire to formulate problems of the highest degree of difficulty and then to relentlessly pursue their solution. The identification and pursuit of Grand Challenges has been a hallmark of the high-performance computing arena for over a decade. In recent years, many other technical communities have defined Grand Challenge problems for their disciplines. While Grand Challenges themselves provide a useful focal point for research and development activities within a discipline, perhaps more important is the community dialogue that surrounds the formulation of Grand Challenge problems.

We seek to stimulate a dialogue among the community of modeling and simulation (M&S) researchers and practitioners regarding where our community is, and where it is and ought to be going.   We welcome, and encourage, participation from all application domains within which M&S plays a significant role.

What Constitutes a Grand Challenge?

We recognize that the concept of proposing Grand Challenges, invariably, generates controversy. There is a certain degree of inherent subjectivity surrounding the formulation of what is, or is not, a Grand Challenge. We suggest that a Grand Challenge problem exhibits at least the following characteristics:

1. The problem must be demonstrably hard to solve. Ideally, the problem requires (demonstrably) several orders-of-magnitude improvement in our capability in one or more areas.
2. The problem must not be known to be unsolvable. If it provably cannot be solved, then it can't be a Grand Challenge. Ideally, quantifiable measures that indicate progress toward a solution are also definable.
3. The solution to a Grand Challenge problem must have a significant economical and/or social impact.

International Conference on Grand Challenges for M&S (ICGCMS)

Held as part of the 2002 Society for Computer Simulation (SCS) Western Multiconference, 27-31 January 2002, Sheraton Four Points Hotel, San Antonio, Texas.

The conference program contained 15 papers spanning a variety of M&S areas.

Dagstuhl Seminar

Based on the program from ICGCMS 2002, a Dagstuhl Seminar on Grand Challenges for M&S was conducted from 26-30 August 2002.  The seminar identified challenge problems in eight areas:

• Simulation in Bio-Molecular Applications and Medicine
• Simulation of Air Traffic
• Network Simulation
• Simulation in Agent-Oriented Software Engineering
• Simulation in Manufacturing
• Simulation in Military Applications
• Parallel/Distributed Simulation
• Modeling and Simulation Methodologies

For full details, refer to the seminar report (html) (pdf).

SCS Simulation

A Special Issue of SCS Simulation is forthcoming in 2004.

Ernest H. Page and Wendell H. (Dell) Lunceford.  Editorial Introduction.

Pieter J. Mosterman and Hans Vangheluwe. "An Introduction to Computer Automated Multi-Paradigm Modeling".

John W. Fowler and Oliver Rose. "Grand Challenges in Modeling and Simulation of Complex Manufacturing Systems".

Lieven Eeckhout and Koen De Bosschere.  "Speeding Up Architectural Simulations for High Performance Processors".

Paul A. Fishwick. "Toward an Integrative Multi-Modeling Interface: A Human-Computer Interface Approach to Interrelating Model Structures".

Send mail to webmaster@thesimguy.com with questions or comments about this web site.
Last modified: 09/27/04