This proposal requests support for a two-day workshop to be held at North Carolina State University to create an implementation plan for "Transforming Combustion Research through CI." A small group of people will develop this plan based on findings of a recent National Research Council study (https://download.nap.edu/login.php?record_id=1) and existing cyberinfrastructure as exemplified by primekinetics.org. Day 1 and the pre-workshop preparation will focus on working out proposed strategies and tactics of the plan. Day 2 will be devoted to writing and vetting the specific details.
The intellectual merit of the activity is to advance combustion science through creation of technical and organizational tools for data archiving, curation, and collaboration. Near-term broader impacts are expected to be technological and educational, creating databases and computational tools for individual, scientific-community, and industrial development and evaluation of a wide range of combustion data. This operational model of software, databases, and support staff should be extensible to other data-generating research communities, transforming the progress of science by allowing improved access and interpretation of data. It should be a model for community development of data-management plans, as well.
An NSF-sponsored workshop was held December 13-14, 2011, at N.C. State University to develop an actionable plan for minimum and mid-level efforts toward establishing a combustion data cyberinfrastructure. A National Research Council study, "Transforming Combustion Research through Cyberinfrastructure," had provided a vision earlier in 2011 for sharing, curation, and extraction of combustion-science data and how it could transform the science and engineering use of these data. It also proposed the outlines of a large five-year development project as the ideal for creating a detailed cyberinfrastructure from the ground up. MACCCR (the Multi-Agency Committee on Combustion Research) had sponsored the NRC study but sought a advice through the workshop on lower-cost options that would still achieve a critical mass of self-sustaining activity. The workshop participants concluded that PrIMe (www.primekinetics.org), operated by a community leadership team, would be the lowest-cost approach because of its existing functionality. Numerous suggestions were developed, including identification of potentially high-impact projects and data-science education. A potential management team and structure was also developed. In follow-up to the workshop, a detailed plan was developed for consideration by the Department of Energy. Although it was declined for the particular solicitation, it provided the requested actionable plan, including the management structure and potential participants.
