“Center of Excellence" model for Collaborative Problem Solving: A Case Study from Modelling/Optimisation for Engineering Design

By Omer Rana (Cardiff University & Welsh eScience Centre, UK)

ABSTRACT

A key theme in Grid computing is the capability to share services (representing different kinds of expertise) distributed across multiple institutions, and generally referred to as a ``Virtual Organization" (VO). The Distributed Problem Solving (DIPSO) project is based on extending such a model of a VO to integrating capability provided through different ``Center of Excellence'' (CoE). Each CoE in this instance provides very specific expertise -- and ways in which such expertise can be accessed, but does not indicate precise details of how such an expertise is to be physically implemented within the center. Such centers may be geographically remote and several centers may offer similar services giving the client the option to select and link varying service providers using criteria relating to cost and reputation. Based on this model, we envision the availability of a ``Modelling'' Center, which given a data set can construct a model of this data set. Which technique is used to construct the model is not revealed to the user, only that different types of modelling capability is available, which varies in the accuracy of the model that will be built. A user may decide to construct a simple model (as it require less computation time or is less costly) in the first instance, and use this as a basis for decision making. Alternatively, a different user may only be interested in a very precise model. This ability to not explicitly reveal the details of the modelling algorithm is useful to: (1) manage intellectual property of the owners of the modelling center, (2) enable updated or new modelling algorithms to be made available, (3) not require the user to know details about the types of modelling algorithms being supported. We describe a Problem Solving Environment that couples multiple CoEs to support the conceptual design phase, and illustrate the approach based on Web Services-based implementation. The CoE approach provides a much better abstraction for interacting with industry -- where intellectual property issues can prohibit more detailed sharing of resources as in a VO.

This work is based on the DIPSO project, funded by the DTI/EPSRC from 2003-2005, involving Professor Ian Parmee (UWE, Bristol), SEA Group Ltd, EVOTEC OAI, and AvantisWorld Ltd. The Web Services infrastructure from this work has led to the FAEHIM toolkit (http://users.cs.cf.ac.uk/Ali.Shaikhali/faehim/), and some aspects of this will be included in the EU FP6 "SORMA" project http://www.cordis.lu/ist/grids/strep_proposal.htm) -- which involves Sun Microsystems from Singapore. DIPSO Web site can be found at: http://www.wesc.ac.uk/projectsite/dipso/index.html.

BIODATA

Omer Rana is a Reader in Computer Science at Cardiff University, and the Deputy Director of the Welsh eScience Centre. He holds a PhD in Computing from Imperial College (University of London) in Neural computing and Parallel Architectures, an MSc in Microelectronics (University of Southampton) and a BEng in Information Systems Engineering from Imperial College. He formerly also acted as a technical advisor to “Grid Technology Partners” --a US based company specializing in Grid technology transfer to industry. Prior to joining Cardiff University he worked as a software engineer (on a part-time basis) with London-based Marshall Biotechnology Limited. Dr Rana has been involved in the program committees for various conferences and workshops in the area of Grid Computing, and also participates on the Editorial boards of the “Concurrency and Computation: Practice and Experience" (Wiley), “Scientific Programming" (IOS Press), and the “ACM Transactions on Autonomous and Adaptive Systems" (ACM Press) journals. He co-chaired the "Jini" working group at the Grid Forum (from 2000-2002) and the "Service Management Frameworks" research group (from 2002-2004).