SES-DSS -- Virtualized Decision Support Systems to address the world 's grand challenges.
Collaborative research between government, academia, industry, and public stakeholders is essential to find innovative solutions to 21st century grand challenges. The proliferation of cyberinfrastructure and cyber physical systems will play critical roles in managing information and large-scale human machine systems. While available data, processing power, and model complexities grow at an accelerating rate, the information processing capacity of human cognition does not. Human computer interaction research is needed to bridge this gap and enable the development, operation, and analytics of emerging, integrated, large-scale, multi-user, real-time systems.
My work (Virtual Technology Laboratory-VTL) specializes in innovative trans-disciplinary research where the emphasis is on the development of visualization tools, virtualized environments and decision support (DSS) for Social Ecological Systems (SES). SES-DSS define and sense SES vulnerabilities within natural terrestrial ecosystems under change and assists in mitigating undesirable future consequences. SES-DSS provides alternative support that,1.) communicates ecosystem complexity to disparate communities of interest, 2.) helps to identify social heterarchies competing for ecosystem service provisions and 3.) assists in the prediction of system shifts to mitigate or prevent declining ecosystem services prior to conflict. SES-DSS, environments and tools simulate social ecological processes that allow people the ability to examine how particular actions can affect the future state of their communities and provides positive democratizing effects on public decision making. The ability to interactively manipulate policies, or environmental factors under a variety of scenarios allow individuals insight into the non-linear dynamics of SES and visualizes any potential risks that they might want to avoid in the future. Providing information in such a way allows individuals the ability to make decisions potentially against their own immediate self-interests for the benefit of future generations.