Planet Texas 2050 (PT2050) is creating a knowledge center for resilience studies and applications. The research efforts span disciplines to touch the outer limits of our knowledge and attempt to connect theory with practice. Our ultimate aim is to catalyze a new understanding of the choices and options our state must endeavor to navigate in the hope of achieving our collective best possible future.
Improving future outcomes is a vast arena of possibilities, within which humans need help making sense of the world. The vast and complex challenges facing society today exceed our ability to reason about them without the aid of computational support. Our most challenging resiliency problems require an intersection and integration across knowledge domains. Vast sets of information and knowledge are captured in the form of texts, qualitative and quantitative data, multiple media expressions such as videos and pictures, computational simulation models, code bases with algorithmic calculations, and the network of knowledge that connects them.
The DataX and Model INTegration components of the PT2050 program aim to design and build data systems and integrated modeling capabilities that connect with leading-edge, high-performance computing facilities. The cyberinfrastructure research prioritizes the development of compute capabilities such that technology is reusable, scalable, and understandable by non-traditional advanced computing user groups and continues to be helpful to advanced HPC users in the PT2050 community. Core services for data and models are designed to meet operational levels that are reliable for researchers with 24/7 technical support.
Structurally, the research is set up to implement production quality services for the PT2050 community while also identifying opportunities for innovating at the transdisciplinary edges for resiliency applications. To do this, the DataX and MINT effort established a “technology seeding” approach to identify innovative ideas at the confluence of technology, society, and expert knowledge. Technology seed ideas are incubated and explored to determine the potential to expand the effort to full-scale production cyberservices. Successful seed ideas can be spun off into standalone research projects once they are ready to enter prototype phases, as the DOLCE and uP-STREAM projects demonstrate. The technology seed approach paired with a rapid prototyping phase establishes a testbed environment for sociotechnical approaches within the PT2050 program.