Research Summaries

Back Developing the Synthetic Theater Operations Research Model's (STORM's) Analytic Utility

Fiscal Year 2014
Division Research & Sponsored Programs
Department Naval Research Program
Investigator(s) Lucas, Thomas W.
Sponsor NPS Naval Research Program (Navy)
Summary The objective of this effort is to develop tools and processes to reduce the amount of manpower and time required to complete STORM output post-processing. This will enable a greater number of dynamically determined scenario replications and create the capability to boost the speed and accuracy with which analysts will be able to gather insights. We will do this by identifying potential data generation/storage efficiencies, automating post-processing tasks, and reducing manpower requirements when using STORM. Additional objectives are to accommodate larger run sizes than are currently feasible and dynamically determine the number of replications required to achieve desired statistical properties for a given scenario. Specific items include:
- Assess the data formats and storage mechanisms currently used by STORM.
- Evaluate the data requirements to be able to construct summary MOEs/MOPs that support N81's goals and objectives.
- Determine the feasibility and best methods to create STORM post-processing. That is, what is required (e.g., software and/or hardware) so that analysts can process, store, and analyze the enormous volume of STORM output data faster and more efficiently.
- Identify and, if necessary, develop or extend computational and analytic methods that facilitate efficient output generation and processing tailored to N81's study objectives. The specific details will be determined as part of the research. Initial ideas, motivated by previous research studies, include data compression; efficient transformation and summary statistic creation; distributed post-processing; dynamic data storage; and finding efficient ways of filtering the output, such as selecting subsets of the data and dynamically applying functional transformations to generate MOEs/MOPs.
- Develop and test dynamic sample size calculations for STORM.
- Demonstrate and assess the analytic potential (and restrictions) of the new capabilities on an unclassified scenario to be supplied by N81. This will only demonstrate the new possibilities with STORM and will not directly support any specific analytic tasks. An NPS thesis student is being recruited for this assignment.
- Using appropriate metrics, determine the efficiency and / or precision gained by using the developed methodology.
- If the results are promising, we will work with N1 to identify a study of mutual interest and plan how the new capabilities can best be used to support that effort in the following year. By that time N81 should be able to independently use the newly created STORM analytic capabilities in their studies.
- All software solutions will be checked with N81 for compatibility with existing platforms and protocols.
Keywords
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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