COMPUTING RESEARCH POLICY BLOG

Mort Zuckerman, editor-in-chief of US News and World Report uses his latest column to berate the Administration for cutting the federal investment in scientific research:

The American century, as the 20th century was known, was built on scientific progress. American corporations were the first to develop major in-house research labs and the first to work closely with academic institutions. After the Soviets launched Sputnik, we went into the overdrive that put a man on the moon.
In the second half of the 20th century, we reaped the harvest: fiber optics, integrated circuits, wireless communications, lasers, the Web, global positioning satellites, hybrid automobiles, video games, computers, and an enormous variety of medical technologies and drugs. All these inventions and discoveries transformed daily life around the world because American know-how and entrepreneurial energy married them to venture capital, then produced and marketed them.
…
Today, however, this is all being reversed. Why? Two reasons. The first is the cutback in federal support for advanced science. The second, many researchers believe, is that the Bush administration is fostering an antiscience culture. President Bush paved the way to double the National Science Foundation’s budget over five years, then, just two years later, he allowed Congress to cut the projected budget by $2 billion. Cut budgets for research and training, and we won’t have the economic growth tomorrow that we had yesterday. And this when we face, for the first time in our history, competition from low-wage, high-human-capital communities in China, India, and Asia. At the very least, it means fewer American jobs.
We must find the money to reverse this trend. It is not so much a current expenditure as an investment in our future. But money has to be accompanied by a recommitment to basing policy on professional analysis and scientific data from responsible agencies. An administration that packs advisory committees with industry representatives and disbands panels that provide advice unacceptable to political ideology is shortchanging the future of all of us.

Zuckerman also makes the case for the reestablishment of the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment — an office set up during the Nixon Administration to provide non-partisan advice to lawmakers on scientific and technical matters, but eliminated in FY 96 as part of congressional belt-tightening. While I agree that the current Administration appears to have issues with scientific advisory bodies that offer advice that conflicts with its policy goals, I’m not sure reconstituting OTA will help. As a veteran of the House Science Committee staff (though after OTA was disbanded), I can attest to the value of having direct contact between Members of Congress and researchers and technologists. I’m sympathetic to arguments that OTA, by virtue of the “buffer” they created between scientists and legislators, encouraged a “bureaucratic” approach to science policy, and I think the most critical functions of the office are probably well-tended to by entities like the Congressional Research Service, the National Academies, and the Government Accountability Office. Plus, as a science advocate now, I appreciate that organizations like CRA are more relied upon by key members of Congress and staff to provide input on science and technology policy.
But otherwise, I think Zuckerman’s piece is on the money. He’s certainly right about the importance of looking at federal support for research as an investment in the future of the country. Read the whole thing.

Federal Computer Week’s Aliya Sternstein has an interesting piece in this week’s issue on the role of computing technology in helping predict and mitigate the cost of Hurricane Katrina.

Scientists are using a range of technologies to better predict the impact hurricanes can have on the economy and environment to minimize future damage and save lives.
Supercomputers, modeling programs and geographic information systems are some of the technologies scientists use to track the movement of hurricanes and predict damage. Experts warn, however, that skilled professionals are as crucial to accurate forecasting as technology.
Supercomputers aided the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in accurately forecasting Hurricane Katrina’s path. The storm devastated the coastal areas of Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi.
“Two and a half to three days before the hurricane hit, we were pretty much zoomed in on the Louisiana/Mississippi Gulf Coast as where the hurricane would hit,” said Jack Beven, a hurricane specialist at the NOAA Tropical Prediction Center. “It’s probably not the most accurate we’ve been, but it’s certainly pretty accurate.”

From what I understand, NOAA does a great job with the computing resources its been allocated. I’m just not sure they’ve been allocated nearly enough. The article points out that NOAA has been able to upgrade its supercomputing capacity from 0.5 teraflops to 1.5 teraflops within the last year. (Update (9/16/2005): This is questionable, see note below. More clarification below!**) That’s a great improvement, but given the scale of the problem they face, I’m not sure it’s adequate.
In its look at the state of computational science in the U.S. in the last year, the President’s Information Technology Advisory Committee (PITAC) (now disbanded, sigh) came up with a really interesting economic case for the need for increased computational resources in hurricane forecasting. I’ve cited it here once previously, but I’ll quote it again:

One nugget I found especially interesting from the presentation [of the PITAC Subcommittee on Computational Science] was an example of both the economic benefit and the health and safety benefit that will arise from more capable modeling enabled by advanced computing. The subcommittee noted that 40 percent of the $10 trillion U.S. economy is impacted by climate and weather. As one example of this, the subcommittee cited the hurricane warnings provided by the National Hurricane Center and the cost of the evacuations that often result. According to the subcommittee, there is $1 million in economic loss for each mile of coastline evacuated. With the current models, the U.S. now “over warns” by a factor of 3, with the average “over-warning” for a hurricane resulting in 200 miles of evacuations — or $200 million in unnecessary loss per event. Improved modeling (better algorithms, better software, more capable hardware, etc) would improve the accuracy of forecasts, saving lives and resources.

While over-warning probably wasn’t much of an issue in Katrina’s case, there are a number of capabilities that we currently lack that may have proven useful. Folks in the severe storms community tell me that current operational forecast models run by NOAA suffer from a number of limitations that work against obtaining accurate predictions of hurricane intensity and path. For example, they cite the lack of resolution in the current models that misses important fine-scale features like rain bands and the eye wall; the lack of coupling between atmospheric, wave and ocean prediction models; and computing resources that can generate only one or a few forecasts (as opposed to large ensembles), which impacts NOAA’s ability to improve forecasting skill and quantify uncertainty.
While NOAA’s move to a 1.5 teraflop capacity is a welcome change, it’s still far below what one would consider a “leadership class” computing capacity for the agency — like those available at NSF, NASA and DOE centers. I know it’s a coarse measure, but 1.5 teraflops doesn’t even get you in the top 300 fastest machines — never mind a machine capable of the kind of improvements hinted at above.* And it’s not all about big iron. NOAA needs additional resources to ramp up its infrastructure — software, hardware and personnel — and to boost basic research programs within the agency and the university community. Asking for any increase in resources anywhere is obviously very tough in the current budget environment, but the size of the “bump” required here is relatively small, given the potential benefit.
But none of this is intended to take away from the job NOAA has done with the resources it already has. Because of NOAA’s forecasts, there was ample warning that this major storm was barreling in on the Gulf Coast and there were reasonable estimates of what it was going to do once it got there. But given sufficient resources the models will get even better, which means the forecasts will get better — more accurate, more precise, and more timely. How much would it be worth to have the accuracy and precision we have now at 24-36 hours before a major storm available 3 days out? Or five days out?
I know it may seem a bit crass to be talking about boosting funding for computing only days after a tragedy as big as Katrina’s impact on the gulf coast, but events like this are a trigger for the reevaluation of national priorities, and it seems to me that computing resources at NOAA haven’t been a national priority for quite a while.
* Update: (9/16/2005) Actually, it looks like NOAA has slightly more adequate computing resources than the FCW article suggests. According to the Top500 list, NOAA has two machines capable of 4.4 teraflops and two capable of 1.8 teraflops. So I’m not sure what the FCW article reflects. That’s still quite some distance from “leadership class” computing, trailing machines in Japan, Sweden, Germany, Russia, Korea, China, and Australia, but it’s better than the figures quoted in the article above.
** Update 2: (9/16/2005) Aliya Sternstein writes to note that the 1.5 teraflop measurement cited in the FCW piece applies to the NWS system at the IBM facility in Gaithersburg, MD, not all of NOAA’s computational capacity.