Bob Moser

Days before the space shuttle Columbia began its ill-fated return to Earth on Feb. 1, 2003, NASA engineers tried to evaluate the severity of earlier damage, using computer software.

The final risk-assessment report raised uncertainties about whether the spacecraft could withstand re-entry, but the report assured NASA that the computer models tended to “overestimate” damage, and so the report was accepted.

During re-entry, the shuttle broke apart. All seven astronauts aboard died. As a result, the disaster heightened the need for better predictive computer models.

The university was selected in 2008 by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) as one of five centers in the nation to lead an $18.7 million research project to study uncertainty quantification. Directed by Bob Moser, a professor in mechanical engineering and the Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences (ICES), the research aims to answer the most nagging question for scientists, administrators and policymakers who use computer models to make life and death decisions, such as whether a shuttle will survive re-entry or where flooding will occur during a hurricane, so that evacuations can be coordinated more effectively.

“The trick here is that not only do computational researchers want to make a prediction, but we want to characterize how reliable that prediction is and whether we have confidence in it and to what degree,” says Moser.

Moser and a dozen other engineering professors, are forging ahead with PECOS, the five-year, DOE-funded interdisciplinary research collaboration formally known as the Center for Predictive Engineering and Computational Sciences.

The center’s charge is to develop the next generation of advanced computational methods for better prediction and simulation of multiscale, multiphysics phenomena. Researchers are developing complex algorithms that can help characterize and reduce uncertainty in models. Although the algorithms are broad enough to apply to scientific problems as diverse as hurricane prediction and oil exploration, the specific focus of PECOS is to provide better analysis of aerospace vehicles re-entering the atmosphere.

Improved algorithms are crucial because, regardless of a supercomputer’s capabilities, it can only produce reliable predictions if the algorithms used in models are as advanced as the computer, said Moser, director of PECOS. Already, the group has developed world-class algorithms and computer codes that are being used by researchers to verify and validate the accuracy of their models.

Read the full story on the university's website which includes additional imagery and opportunity for discussion.