ModSim in Hampton Roads, the K-12 Education Imperative
HR Partnership | September 2, 2010
from Jim Batterson, a retired NASA engineer who served as Senior Advisor to the Commonwealth for STEM Initiatives in Governor Kaine’s administration
In his recent Virginian Pilot Op-Ed piece, “A Vital Spinoff from JFCOM”, Jack Ezzell pointed out many of Hampton Roads’ strengths in the area of modeling and simulation. He defined modeling and simulation as:
“Modeling and simulation refers to the process of developing a mathematical model of a real-world process, such as the flow of containers through a port facility and solving the model under different conditions. The information extracted from the model can be used to enhance the effectiveness of the real-world process and increase efficiency and profitability.”
This excellent example from the economically critical ports extends to traffic and transportation analysis. Still other current modeling and simulation applications that should be of interest to Hampton Roads’ citizens include tidal level predictions for hurricanes and nor’easters being developed at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science at William & Mary (VIMS); innovative designs for aircraft carrier landing systems at Northrop-Grumman Newport News (NGNN); design and development at NASA Langley Research Center (NASA-LARC), of launch pad abort systems to save astronauts’ lives in the event of a rocket anomaly during launch; design of particle accelerators and instrumentation at Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (JLab); a “virtual stethoscope”, developed at the Eastern Virginia Medical School (EVMS) in collaboration with Old Dominion University’s Virginia Modeling, Analysis, and Simulation Center (VMASC), as a training device that simulates the sounds of the human body’s circulatory and respiratory systems; and many, many others.
While modeling and simulation only approximates real-world behaviors and does not simply replace physical experiments, it does allow for extensive insights into system behaviors where full scale experimentation is not possible such as with hurricanes, or where experiments might involve human safety such as possible changes to the air traffic control system to allow the integration of drones with piloted aircraft, or are too expensive such as with NASA’s pioneering missions aimed at landing scientific instruments on other planets in the solar system. We know that hurricane prediction is not perfect, but with the data collected and analyzed from each unique storm, scientists improve the mathematical models making predictions for the next storms better. So it is not only the capabilities of modeling and simulation, but also the implications and limits of the model used that today’s student must learn.
What has allowed for this recent explosion of
modeling and simulation applications? Find out by reading more…
