A Virtual Organization to Develop Complex, Multi-scale Models Addressing the Impact of Inundation on Natural and Man-made Environments

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Proposal Number: CBET-0742806Principal Investigator: Pancake, CherriAffiliation: Oregon State UniversityProposal Title: A Virtual Organization to Develop Complex, Multi-scale Models Addressing the Impact of Inundation on Natural and Man-made EnvironmentsOver 70% of the earth's surface is covered in water. When subject to extreme events, these water sources can become destructive floods, storm waves and surges, and tsunamis, resulting in billions of dollars of damage each year. However, mitigation measures are limited by the current incomplete understanding of such inundation phenomena and the impact they can have on landforms, structures, lifelines, and other objects in their paths. The underlying scientific and engineering issues are complex and involve scales from ranging from thousands of kilometers to micro-scale turbulence. There is no comprehensive model available that addresses even a single type of extreme inundation event. Developing a model that accurately portrays the complex, multi-scale behavior of an extreme inundation event and its effects on the surrounding environments requires collaboration among researchers in a broad spectrum of disciplines, including hydrodynamics, sedimentology, geomorphology, materials, and structural mechanics. This award provides funds for planning a Virtual Institute for Multi-scale Inundation Studies (VIMIS), a proposed engineering virtual organization to promote and facilitate the collaborative development of complex, multi-scale models for the impact of inundation on natural and man-made environments. Planning efforts include defining a draft organizational structure, membership features, and governance using user-centered techniques to arrive at community consensus on these issues. User-centered design methods will ensure that user requirements are identified accurately and comprehensively to create a conceptual plan for the VIMIS cyberinfrastructure (CI) and a prototype of that CI. The CI prototype will include initial versions of five portals: a shared membership portal supporting organizational membership and governance; a shared computation portal hosting numerical models for general research use; a shared data portal providing mechanisms for sharing a broad range of information within the broader community; a shared research portal supporting individual collaborative research projects and facilitating the process of sharing research products with the broader community; and a shared education portal disseminating the results of research efforts to educators and practitioners. The prototype will leverage other CI efforts from commercial, academic, and national laboratory communities. Expected outcomes of this award include: a cohesive community, user requirements for CI, a long-term conceptual design for that CI, and a prototype that demonstrates the value of CI to VIMIS. VIMIS, through its CI, will provide an environment that helps researchers identify mutual interests, find appropriate collaborators, and deal with the mechanics of collaborating with people from remote institutions. VIMIS will enable numerical efforts to model inundation beyond a single research group's computational capabilities to provide access to more advanced computing resources and enable integrative collaboration from computer graphics and fluid mechanics experts. An integral part of VIMIS is to develop shared teaching materials about the impact of inundation on natural and man-made environments, including shared models and tools, replay of experiments and other use of research data in the classroom, and integrative/cross-disciplinary materials all based on research findings. These efforts will also yield tools for hazard prevention and mitigation, thereby helping to save lives and minimize property losses.