These are large-scale, distributed applications of high social and economic impact that contain an extensive information-processing component and that can benefit greatly by building an underlying information infrastructure. National Challenges to be addressed by the HPCC Program in FY 1994 and FY 1995 include:
A digital library is the foundation of a knowledge center without walls, open 24 hours a day, and accessible over a network. The HPCC Program supports basic and strategic digital libraries research and the development and demonstration of associated technologies. These technologies are used in all of the other National Challenge applications.
Beginning in FY 1994, the Program will support the following R&D, much of it funded by a joint NSF/ARPA/NASA "Research in Digital Libraries" initiative:
NOAA will provide Internet-based access to and distribution of remote sensing imagery and other satellite products from its geostationary and polar orbiting operational environmental remote sensing satellites. NASA will provide access to other remote sensing images and data over the Internet and the gigabit testbeds. This includes making observational data from satellites available to state and local governments, the agriculture and transportation industries, and to libraries and educational institutions.
NSA will develop a prototype environment of the future in which a user, an application developer, and a data administrator each sees an integrated information space in terms directly meaningful and accessible to them, rather than as a collection of relatively unintelligible, difficult-to- access databases.
Crisis and Emergency Management
Large-scale, time-critical, resource-limited problems such as managing natural and man-made disasters are another vital National Challenge. Effective management involves the use of command, control, communications, and intelligence information systems to support decision makers in anticipating threats, formulating plans, and executing these plans through coordinated response. Many other National Challenge projects provide information and information management tools for use in crisis and emergency management. HPCC efforts include ARPA's research projects on ubiquitous data communications infrastructure in the face of disasters, including the timely development and transmission of plans to operational units, exploitation of technical and human sources of information, and input to command. NOAA plans to make available environmental warnings and forecasts and other relevant information to support emergency management through the Internet. In FY 1994, NSF initiated a program to support research leading to development of information infrastructure technologies that can be integrated into the civil infrastructure, including transportation, water quality, safety of waste removal, and access to energy sources.
Education and Lifelong Learning
HPCC support for this National Challenge involves making HPCC technologies a resource for the Nation's education, training, and learning systems for people of all ages and abilities nationwide. The NII approaches this challenge from several directions:
The HPCC Program is providing network access and conducting pilot projects that demonstrate HPCC technologies for improving learning and training and that can be scaled to nationwide coverage. A program in networking infrastructure for education was begun by NSF in FY 1994. On- going K-12 programs in science, engineering, and biomedical and health applications are conducted by almost all HPCC agencies.
Midway through my junior year at New Hanover High School in Wilmington, North Carolina, an experience began for me that has re-routed the path of my entire education and learning adventures. I, and three other students, won a national scientific computing contest called SuperQuest, sponsored by the Cornell University and the National Science Foundation. SuperQuest was no ordinary science fair -- rather, it was a "take a giant leap outside of your mind" contest. It was a fortuitous opportunity for us high schoolers. Our sudden introduction to the world of high performance computers included IBM RISC clusters, an ES/9000 vector processor, and a KSR parallel processor.
One of the greatest benefits of participating in the SuperQuest program has been my exposure to computer networks and telecommunications. I delved into the online world for my first time before we had won, when the team and I were constructing a science project the SuperQuest judges might deem a winner. We spent just a semester reaching consensus on the topic! Each of us had ideas -- from investigating mag-lev trains, to orb spiderwebs, to the pitching of a baseball. Which of these were within our capability? And which should we perhaps leave to the Princeton researchers? We turned to the Internet to gather the advice and experience of more knowledgeable folks. Our first action was to post questions on as many science bulletin boards and online services as possible. The two we frequented were the SuperQuest homebase at the Cornell Theory Center, and the High Performance Computing network (HPC Wire) in Colorado. Both were the ideal sources to check the feasibility of modeling an orb spider web or the flight of a baseball on a supercomputer. Sometimes we received answers in a day -- and sometimes within an hour. We were wowed not only by the speed of the knowledge transfer, but also, by the altruism of the network community. Through our communications, we were able to quickly focus on the orb spider web as our project. It was within our scope.
In the archaic tradition of our 12 years of schooling, we trekked to the local library to research spider webs. This proved to be time consuming. One of our teachers introduced us to WAIS, an Internet indexed database search function. Ecstasy! We sat with him as he logged onto the net from his desktop PC, called up WAIS, and ordered it to do both a worldwide search of indexes with the words "spider" or "web" in them, and a cross- reference follow-up. Within 20 minutes, the net had spewed 20 pages of information sources. We were filled with the the sudden comprehension of the scientific process -- the gathering of data and the elimination of possibilities.
As part of the SuperQuest prize, we attended a three-week summer seminar at the Cornell Theory Center. There we were introduced to LAN networks and file-sharing, mainframes and X-terminals, and the minute details of the Internet. Thus, we could suddenly access the libraries of each of the seven schools at Cornell, as well as data from specialized projects such as the synchrotron and recent biomedical research. Again, the process of gathering data was accomplished primarily through using computer communications.
Upon our return home, we were able to use our Internet connection (which was another SuperQuest reward) to continue our research and also access the supercomputer facilities back at Cornell. After two months of a maniacal pace, and with our interim report mailed, we decided to take a week-long break. However, I found myself drawn to the computer --there were so many interesting things to explore -- and I was so curious. I logged into "Sunsite" at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and began browsing archives, just for the fun of it. I pulled up a picture of an ancient Vatican manuscript, (Click here to visit the Vatican Exhibit.) with its crinkled brown pages and mottled writing. However, disappointed that I could not make out any of the words, I was about to close the window, when I had an idea! Using the XV software (also obtained from the net), I zoomed into a word and smoothed it into something legible. I had stumbled into a combination of resources that allowed me to examine the document.
And I didn't stop there. My school system's current agenda involves the reforming of the traditional daily schedule; we may initiate "block" schedules in the coming year. As student body president, I represent the school on the Superintendent's Advisory Board -- our mission: to investigate the pros and cons of block scheduling. We decided that most important, we needed to hear from students in other schools that had implemented the program. The nearest one was five hours away. A group of teachers had been bused in the previous month to visit for an hour or two of questions -- the only time available after travel time. No student on the advisory board wanted to repeat this exercise and in fact, we were almost reduced to drawing straws for a victim, when I had a sudden flash. A bit of background: The state of North Carolina has, within the past five years, set up a fiberoptics network that enables a teacher at one school to simultaneously teach her home class as well as classes that are located across the county and even the state. My mother was teaching an oceanography class over the system and I knew that at least one of those schools was block-scheduled. At the next advisory board meeting, I moved that we postpone our road trip and use the fiberoptics network for an afterschool teleconference. Within four weeks, we had teleconferenced with two block-scheduled schools. We asked questions that mattered to students: what happens when you miss school; how are athletics affected; and, how are advanced placement classes organized. Moreover, the two block-scheduled schools were able to discuss their own variations of block scheduling.
Computer technology has not simply affected my education; it has changed my personality. I have travelled from having a daydream about why spider webs are so strong, to performing concrete scientific research, to making an obscure document understandable (one that I did not know existed, but for the Internet), and I initiated a solution to a real-life organizational problem. I'm feeling pretty good.
Frank "Gib" Gibson, 1994 national high school winner of the NSF/NASA/ED telecommunications essay with teacher, Abigail Saxon.
This National Challenge integrates communications, data management, and security services to allow different organizations to automatically exchange business information. Communications services transfer the information from the originator to the recipient. Data management services define the interchange format of the information. Security services authenticate the source; verify the integrity of the information received; prevent disclosure by unauthorized users; and verify that the information was received by the intended recipient. Electronic commerce applies and integrates these services to support business and commercial applications such as electronic bidding, ordering and payments, and exchange of digital product specifications and design data.
ARPA will develop a common underlying infrastructure for authentication, authorization, accounting and banking services, usage metering, and fee- for-access within networks and distributed systems. ARPA is also developing mechanisms for active commerce that will seek out qualified bidders on behalf of customers, based on extensive knowledge of the bidders capabilities and the customers needs.
Beginning in FY 1995, NIST will collaborate with industry to develop and apply technologies that enable electronic commerce in general, with initial emphasis on the manufacturing of electronic and mechanical components and subsystems. The agency will conduct R&D in security services and establish facilities to support interoperability testing.
Oil consumption, capital investment in power plants, and foreign trade deficits all benefit from improved management of energy demand and supply. Beginning in FY 1994, DOE and the power utilities will document and assess the tools and technologies needed to implement the National Challenge of energy demand and supply management. They will also document the expected economic benefits and identify policy or regulatory changes needed so that the utilities can participate in the deployment of the NII.
Environmental Monitoring and Waste Minimization
Improved methods and information will dramatically increase the competitiveness of U.S. companies in the world's $100 billion per year environmental monitoring and waste management industries. Beginning in FY 1995, digital libraries of the large volume and wide range of environmental and waste information will be assembled and tools will be developed to make these libraries useful. These include:
Advanced HPCC communication and information technologies promise to improve the quality, effectiveness and efficiency of today's health care system. This National Challenge will complement the biomedical Grand Challenges. It will include testbed networks and collaborative applications to link remote and urban patients and providers to the information they need, database technologies to collect and share patient health records in secure, privacy-assured environments, advanced biomedical devices and sensors, and system architectures to build and maintain the complex health information infrastructure.
Using a Broad Agency Announcement, NIH began funding the following activities in FY 1993, and is expanding efforts beginning in FY 1994:
A three-year contract was awarded in FY 1993 to a consortium of nine West Virginia institutions to use advanced networking technologies to deliver health services in both rural and urban areas. Other proposals received in response to the announcement will be funded in FY 1994.
Beginning in FY 1995, NIH will provide cancer prevention and treatment information to the public via several multimedia systems including Mosaic (described in Section 10).
An ARPA Biomedical Program will develop advanced biomedical devices and tools to build next-generation health care information systems.
NSF will expand a program in health care delivery systems begun in FY 1994. Included are activities in cost-effective telemedicine systems for distance medicine applications.
Manufacturing Processes and Products
Advancing manufacturing through the use of HPCC technologies in design, processing, and production of manufactured products is another National Challenge. A key element is the development of the infrastructure technology and standards necessary to make the processes and product information accessible to both enterprises and customers. This Challenge relies on network security and on the Digital Libraries and Electronic Commerce National Challenges, and is closely related to the Energy Management Challenge. On-going multi-year projects include:
Public Access to Government Information
This National Challenge will vastly improve public access to information generated by Federal, state, and local governments through the application of HPCC technology. On-going efforts include connecting agency depository libraries and other sources of government information to the Internet to enable public access; and demonstrating, testing, and evaluating technologies to increase such access and effective use of the information.
For example, the White House, the U.S. Congress (House of Representatives and Senate), and the HPCC Program make information available on the Internet. Other examples are ARPA's research in delivering computer science reports and literature to researchers and the public; NSF's Science and Technology Information Service and its support for the Securities and Exchange Commissions Edgar system; NSF's pilot project to demonstrate the use of the Internet and Mosaic in disseminating NSF information about program activities and accomplishments; DOE efforts to make energy statistics available to the public; NASA/NOAA/EPA efforts to make environmental data available to researchers and the general public; and Public Health Service (PHS) sponsorship of a variety of electronic information services, including NIH and NLM Internet servers that also provide connectivity to other health information services such as the bulletin board at the Food and Drug Administration and the PHS AIDS bulletin board.
The concept of the NII's "Information Superhighway" has captured the imagination of the Nation.