Research Summaries

Back Computational Experimentation to Simplify and Optimize a Large-Scale Simulation of Resourcing Marine Corps Readiness

Fiscal Year 2019
Division Research & Sponsored Programs
Department NPS Naval Research Program
Investigator(s) Lucas, Thomas W.
Sponsor NPS Naval Research Program (Navy)
Summary Marine Corps Senior Leaders need to allocate service resources to deliver ready units to Combatant Commanders when required. The interactions between resources and readiness are complex, involving thousands of decisions and intermediate outcomes. DC P&R is building a suite of models of operating force elements that propagates the effects of resourcing and policies in the Future Years Defense Plan (FYDP) to quantify the readiness of force elements in each year of the FYDP. When complete, the Predictive Readiness Model (PRM) model will provide DC P&R the means to experiment, visualize, understand, and explain how Marine Corps readiness will change in response to alternative programmatic and/or force management courses of action.

The PRM is complex and contains a large number of input variables, many of which are uncertain, propagated through causal chains of interdependent activities. This project will use state-of-the-art high-dimensional design of experiments, high performance computing, and data mining to efficiently explore the developing model. The research team will use these technologies to design and analyze PRM experiments with the objective of simplifying the model by identifying which factors, data sources, and submodels most effect readiness, as well as those with lessor impact. The ability to easily conduct massive experimentation with PRM will also enable analysts to extract more information from the model—including identifying the driving factors and data elements, quantifying trade-offs, and ascertaining change-points. The research will also look at advancing design and analysis methods to better explore the PRM.

Final products, as appropriate, shall include copies of all software, data, design documents, user manuals, test cases, and any theses, journal articles, or conference proceedings resulting from the research.
Keywords
Publications Publications, theses (not shown) and data repositories will be added to the portal record when information is available in FAIRS and brought back to the portal
Data Publications, theses (not shown) and data repositories will be added to the portal record when information is available in FAIRS and brought back to the portal