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SUMMARY:Middleware to Support Model Coupling in Landscape Decision Making 
 - Gordon Blair (Lancaster University)
DTSTART:20190704T161000Z
DTEND:20190704T163000Z
UID:TALK126853@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:INI IT
DESCRIPTION:Middleware is a term that refers to a layer of software that s
 its on top of an underlying computational infrastructure\, providing a pro
 gramming model to support the development of applications and services\, a
 nd hiding the complexity of the underlying (inevitably distributed) infras
 tructure. This has been an area of intense activity both in academia and i
 ndustry and a number of solutions and associated platforms have been propo
 sed. Middleware has significant advantages in terms of interoperability an
 d reduction in development time through re-use. This talk will pose the qu
 estion of the role of middleware in supporting integrated environmental mo
 delling\, with a particular focus on supporting model coupling. The talk w
 ill highlight a significant gap between the functionality of existing midd
 leware standards and platforms and the needs of the environmental sciences
  community\, including in the important and demanding area of landscape de
 cision-making. This is partially down to the focus of middleware on repres
 enting the end system behaviour\, e.g. in service-oriented architecture\, 
 when in fact much of the complexity is in the interconnection or coupling 
 between services. A further key reason is the domain specific requirements
  of modelling in terms of\, for example: i) the need to understand the sem
 antics of environmental concepts\; ii) the subsequent need to manage mappi
 ngs between the outputs of one model and the inputs of another\, e.g. usin
 g arbitrary transfer functions\; iii) the need to support reasoning across
  scales\; iv) the important requirement to understand uncertainty in model
  chains including the propagation of uncertainty\; v) the need to offer po
 tentially sophisticated management of the underlying network/distributed s
 ystem to deliver the right quality of service in terms of data transfer wh
 en dealing with potentially very large data sets. This talk will argue tha
 t there is an urgent need for middleware to support integrated environment
 al modelling\, with specific focus on supporting model coupling. Furthermo
 re\, the talk will argue that this requires a fundamental rethink of middl
 eware in terms of supporting the domain specific needs of environmental sc
 ience [1].<br> <br> [1] Blair\, G.S. (2018). Complex distributed systems: 
 The need for fresh perspectives. 38th IEEE International Conference on Dis
 tributed Computing Systems (ICDCS)\, 1410-1421\, 10.1109/ICDCS.2018.00142<
 br>
LOCATION:Seminar Room 1\, Newton Institute
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