Conference: DECIDE: Computational Decision Support for High-Consequence, Complex Problems

An in-person workshop of leading experts across government, industry, and academia will be convened, to identify challenges and opportunities for developing a National Strategic Computing Reserve (NSCR). As envisioned, the NSCR would ensure critical computational resources are available during a national or international crisis. The U.S. government, industry, and academia lead the world in high performance computing and scientific critical infrastructure. The NSCR aims to ensure resources such as access to high performance computing systems, AI data and resources, and scientific critical infrastructure are available to address significant crisis events. A crucial objective of the workshop is to identify and assess both challenges and opportunities that would arise at a National Strategic Computing Reserve. The workshop has identified four key topic areas that will be addressed by distinct breakout groups that focus on challenges that would be essential to a National Strategic Computing Reserve. The first topic is a multidisciplinary and computational integration that would be essential in a multi-organization computation reserve. Second, a computing reserve is anticipated to require applied mathematics in Artificial Intelligence and will be explored. Third, the reserve would be activated during a crisis and uncertainty management will be an operational challenge. Finally, consensus building and trust would be a key aspect of a computing reserve that spans different government agencies, industry partners, and academic experts. The outcome of the workshop will advance science and understanding across all four topic areas and serve as a critical next step in directions for a National Strategic Computing Reserve. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.