Beyond the Inflection Point and on to the Future
Article by: Rick Severinghaus  (rick.severinghaus@d-a-s.com) Rick Severinghaus Excom Chair Much has been happening across the M&S community over the past year. Prominent among all the issues we see in addressing standards issues is the growing recognition that, as a community, simulation and modeling challenges have increasingly moved from the local, through the regional, to the global. Whereas 10 years, or even 3 years, ago, many projects were being addressed at the local and regional level, many of today's prominent M&S issues require solutions encompassing a global view, with integration of diverse and often non-aligned segments to provide solutions to serious real-world problems. Our current Workshop theme provides an excellent example of this trend; for nations and governments to be able to plan for, manage, and execute effective societal and homeland security programs, global solutions are required - systems, processes, and procedures of a design to span political, diplomatic, economic, and social boundaries, on short notice, to generate timely and effective response to large scale disasters, both natural and man-made. From the complicated to the complex With the domain of SISO, our community has worked hard to develop a family of standards and best practices to serve community needs. As a community, we have developed many intricate and complicated models and simulations, and expended great effort to integrate them to serve ever broader and demanding requirements. All together, efforts over nearly two decades of work, by government, industry, and academia, have resulted in a large inventory of product, illustrated by the left hand "pillar" shown in the figure. Figure 1 M&S community product, now and into the future M&S at the inflection point - 2007 It is safe to say, however, that all progress to date is but a way station on a long and difficult path to finding solutions addressing large scale, complex, and international M&S interoperability problems. To mention a few, multi-level security, characterization of political and social aspects of crowds, governments, and military-like organizations, and simulation of numerous aspects of communications infrastructure are all problems which have proven intractable, if not unyielding, to effort focused on providing effective, efficient and truly interoperable M&S solutions. Each of these I would characterize as complex problems, as opposed to complicated ones. And I would argue that what makes up the left hand pillar is largely product addressing complicated problems, not complex ones. Our community has achieved good results in addressing complicated problems, but solving complex problems as in the examples above has proven elusive. It is in this sense that our community is at an inflection point in our progress towards solving interoperability problems. Future progress will be harder, and come at a slower pace, yet the importance and impacts of success will grow out of proportion to that progress. Moving up the progress curve - beyond the inflection point Our M&S community has ramped up its expertise and experience over two decades, and provided solutions, techniques, and work around to address a host of complicated modeling and simulation issues. Yet in this process, many more difficult problems have been identified, in parallel with recognition by those in leadership positions that M&S solutions on a global scale are needed to address difficult and important issues in the "real world." Looming before us are a host of problems and challenges, many of which will need, indeed require, new approaches, new concepts and new interoperability standards to solve. Working these issues will be harder, and take longer, as the community moves beyond the inflection point of progress to solve such complex problems. What the future holds As SISO embarks on its second decade of existence, a first step needs to be effort to get our arms around the scope and scale of complex M&S issues, and to then focus on a chosen subset of those issues as the best way to serve the international M&S community. Three current efforts in this regard are worth mentioning - the SISO Live Virtual Constructive Architecture Interoperability Study Group, the VV&A Summit meeting organized for the Fall 2007 SIW, and the SISO Conference Committee effort this Workshop to capture M&S issues of importance to agencies and organizations responsible for Societal and Homeland Security. These represent but a small subset of interoperability issues that need to be addressed on a global scale. What is needed most in addressing complex global interoperability problems is commitment, on an international scale, to collegial dialogue, intercourse and debate among government, industry, and academic interests, and to investment of resources - in time, intellectual inquiry, organizational support, and dollars - for investigation of M&S interoperability problems and potential solutions. SISO is organized to provide an infrastructure that supports such commitment, and SISO leadership is working on various initiatives to increase and improve its effectiveness in serving the international M&S community. I look forward to collaborating with all of you in pursuing this agenda, and invite you to add your voice to the dialogue.
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