SBIR Phase I: Scalable Collaborative Analytical Modeling

这个小企业创新研究第一阶段项目的更广泛的影响/商业潜力是使组织-无论是企业，政府还是非营利组织-做出更明智的，更多数据驱动的决策。所有组织都必须决定如何分配有限的资源，并在满足一系列目标（如利润、社会福利或健康）的背景下这样做。建模作为一个过程，模型作为该过程的工件，使决策者能够通过目标的视角理解数据，然后做出决策；单靠数据，无论有多少，都无法做出决定。随着世界上越来越多的方面被数字化测量和捕获，数据的广度和数量必然需要更多的建模来编纂，并将更多的利益相关者纳入其中。组织需要一个建模工作流和支持工具，能够处理更大范围的数据，非技术用户完全可以访问，并允许更多的涉众参与到这个重要的过程中。这个Small Business Innovation Research Phase I项目解决了许多用户协作构建和维护分析模型的挑战，这些分析模型是一致的和可重复的，同时允许发散和收敛的变化。一方面，电子表格作为一种通用的、特别的建模工具，对许多人来说是开放的和可访问的；另一方面，整个软件应用程序（无论是打包的还是定制开发的）通常在重要方面更强大，但通常会牺牲可访问性和通用性。这个项目将产生一个协作集成开发环境的原型，用于管理代码和数据的建模。该原型的技术可行性将通过开发一个测试框架来评估，该测试框架模拟模型的发散和收敛，并对结果进行评分。商业可行性将通过与建立真实模型的用户进行测试来评估，以了解将其推向市场所需的功能范围。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project is to enable organizations - whether businesses, governments, or non-profits - to make more informed, more data-driven decisions. All organizations must decide how to allocate limited resources and do so in the context of meeting a set of objectives, such as profit, social wellbeing, or health. Modeling as a process and models as artifacts of that process allow decision makers to understand data through the lens of objectives to then make decisions; data alone, no matter how much, cannot make decisions. As more aspects of the world are instrumented and captured digitally, the breadth and quantity of data will out of necessity require more modeling to be codified and bring more stakeholders into the fold. Organizations need a modeling workflow and supporting tools that are capable of handling this wider range of data, are fully accessible to non-technical users, and allow more stakeholders to participate in this important process.This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project addresses the challenge of many users collaboratively building and maintaining analytical models that are consistent and reproducible while allowing for divergent and convergent change. On one end, spreadsheets serve as a general-purpose, ad hoc modeling tool that is open-ended and accessible for many, and on the other, whole software applications whether packaged or custom developed are generally more powerful in important ways but usually sacrifice accessibility and generalizability. This project will produce a prototype of a collaborative integrated development environment for modeling that manages code and data. The technical feasibility of this prototype will be evaluated by developing a test framework that simulates the divergence and convergence of models and scores the outcomes. The commercial feasibility will be evaluated by testing with users building real models to understand the scope of functionality required to bring this to market.