1. Advancing Software for Ecological Forecasting
National Center for Supercomputing Applications
Urbana, IL
March 25-27, 2014
conferences.igb.illinois.edu/ecological_forecasting
Description
Two distinct but overlapping challenges for advancing software for ecological forecasting
are: improving model-data fusion and prediction workflows (scientific workflows) and
facilitating inter-operability of different statistical engines (inference engines). This
workshop aims to bring together scientists and developers working in these different areas
to facilitate the development of improved software for ecological forecasting through
enabling due-diligence, syntheses, generalization and collaboration. Each group will benefit
from sharing ideas and experiences within their respective domains, but also from
collaborations among domains. We expect developers of scientific workflows to benefit
from knowing the latest inference methods, algorithms and outputs and inference engine
developers to benefit from knowing how their engines might interoperate with the
different data-types and analytical methods used in scientific workflows.
Intended Outcomes
1) Working papers on the current state and future areas for improvement of software tools,
2) Initiate future collaborative research funding proposals, 3) Community websites
featuring available and desired resources, and 4) new organizational networks.
Agenda
DAY 1: Plenary talks (1 hour total) by organizers stating scope, goals and intended
outcomes. Aim will be to establish the key areas of environmental science and applications
where we critically need to improve workflows and engines.
Project overviews: (4 min each). Representative for each of the workshop invitees to
introduce their tools and interests, interspersed with coffee breaks, concluding at lunch.
Focus on understanding state of the art and what each group brings to the discussion.
Afternoon will begin with a brief talk by Matt Jones on challenges and opportunities,
followed by parallel track working groups focusing on 1) scientific workflows and 2)
inference engines. At the conclusion of the day we will identify topics to focus on during
the following day.
DAY 2: Aaron Ellison will give a keynote talk. Then, workshops discussions organized
around topics determined by the group on the previous day. The approach will be to cover
opportunities for overlapping and interfacing existing tools, identifying key gaps in what we
can currently do and any key opportunities and benefits to adopting common or compatible
standards and protocols. The day will finish with sharing conclusions amongst the entire
group and identifying areas of overlap or other topics needing critical discussion the next day.
Focus of the day will be identifying new and important ways to develop scientific workflows
and inference engines into the future.
DAY 3: First 2 hours: groups will be shuffled to allow fresh ideas / criticism / contributions to
the conclusions from Day 2. Either side of lunch dedicated to organizing and writing
workshop outputs. Final session to bring together entire group to summarize workshop
outputs. Focus of the day will be on developing tangible useful outputs from the workshop.
Organizers:
David LeBauer, Chair (Univ. Illinois)
Perry de Valpine (Univ. California, Berkeley)
Matthew Smith (Microsoft Research)
Participating Projects:
Scientific Workflows:
ARES
DART
EcoPAD
ESMF
Kepler
PEcAn
Science Pipes
VisTrials
EcoPath and EcoSim
Inference Engines
OpenBUGS
Distribution Modeller
JAGS
INLA
STAN
PyMC
ADMB
Filzbach
POMP
R-INLA
Funding:
DOE (RCN Forecast)
Institute for Genomic Biology
Microsoft Research Connections