Reply to 'FDS and the Challenge of Big Data'

While on the Tube's District Line from the office, I read the most recent blog article written by the developers of FDS. It is titled "FDS and the Challenge of Big Data".

For those of you who do not know it, FDS stands for Fire Dynamics Simulator, and it is the state of the art in fire modelling. It is a fine, advanced and excellent code of Computational Fluid Dynamics  (CFD), especially developed to simulate the behavior of flames and smoke in buildings and large open spaces. Its source code, in FORTRAN, is open and freely avaible to all. The work of development and maintenance is mostly carried by staff at NIST (VTT at Finland also plays a major role). NIST stand for National Institute of Standards and Technology, and it is a USA government agency which mission is to "promote U.S. innovation and industrial competitiveness by advancing science and technology".

Their blog article is mostly a complain. It is formulated around the apparent lack of good collaborations from academia around the world to support their difficult task of developing and maintaining FDS. They think the reason for this is down to the "publish or perish" stereotype, and use a blog article from a Cosmology researcher who expresses similar frustrations with academia.

I have four points to make regarding the FDS blog article:

0) Thank you. I felt bad that you think your contributions go thankless.This is unfair, because FDS is the state of the art, it is provided without cost and openly for all around the world to use. It has tremendously helped the Fire Safety Engineering community to develop further.

1) Test You Hypotheses. You should make sure you know and understand your potential collaborators, specially before you criticize them in the open. For example, the "primary currency of the academic reward structure" in engineering departments is funding and industrial relevance, not published papers. Be aware of using a Cosmology case to run your arguments against academic users of FDS who are mostly from engineering departments. Also, note that there are more jobs for research in Cosmology than for research in Fire Safety, so I find your final kick "there are only so many jobs available in cosmology" ill suited to the critique.

2) More Carrots. Find some of the true rewards that match the motivation of your potential collaborators. For example, I suggest you create the yearly NIST Award for Outstanding Contributions to FDS. This would create recognition and esteem which are highly valued in academic CVs, more than a bunch of papers, and in some cases it is the key for obtaining a position or promoting.

3) Elephant in the Room. Lets we forget that academia has played an essential role in the success of FDS, maybe also a thankless task. I have said in the past [*] that I believe the industrial success of FDS lies on three pillars; it is free, it is excellent for research, and there are hundreds of papers showing good modelling results (just google it). The third point is because no other fire code has ever received so much publication attention. The difference with other fire codes being of two orders of magnitude. This very high number of journal papers and the multiple open discussions taking place in any fire conference every single year have promoted somehow the image that FDS is 'the validated', 'the accepted' or 'the standard' model for a wide range of industrial designs. And industry uses FDS extensively, in thousands of fire protection projects worldwide in any one year, with the approval of the corresponding authorities. Hence, FDS contributes to fulfill the mission of NIST, and promotes innovation and industrial competitiveness by advancing science and technology, in the USA and also in the rest of the world. This industrial projection is thanks to all the research users of FDS who decided to publish and go public at some point. Thanks go to them too.

[*] Advantages and Disadvantages of Fire Modelling, Irish Chief Fire Officers Association Annual Conference, Dundalk, May 2012.

Fin's and Candle's Creative Contests: towards the motivation of engineering students

We engineers are in general not the best communicators nor the best at appreciating arts. These are not really topics of interest during university studies in Engineering Schools around the world. This was the theme of a latest editorial in Ingenia, the magazine of the Royal Academy of Engineering, where Dr Steedmand said "Engineers are rarely taught about public engagement and as a result are often criticised for lacking communication skills. A few engineers, through their work, do spend time with the public, but this is not enough. We need much more public engagement if we are to raise the awareness and understanding of engineering and its role in society".

I wanted to build on this in the two courses I teach at Imperial College, ME2 Heat Transfer and ME4 Combustion. I also wanted to boost somehow students' motivation. So I organized Creative Contests at the beginning of the new academic year. The instructions to participate were the following:

"I have three extra copies of the textbook to give away. If interested, send me a poem, comic, drawing, painting, song, video, or anything creative that explains why you are taking this course. Art, wit and humour are allowed". 

And I gave them one week to submit their pieces. I received several submissions and found three winners for each course. Congratulations to the winners, hope you use extensively your new gifted textbooks.

Submissions to the 2013 Fin's Creative Contest in ME2 Heat Transfer:
(first three are the winners. Each received a hardcopy of Incropera's Foundations of Heat Transfer)

by Keon - Heat transfer is not a lie - Click for song . Click for lyrics.

by Hugh  - Amazing Heat Transfer Acrostic

 

By Eifion - Heat Transfer Limericks

By Kathryn- why study heat transfer?

By Robert - Five reasons why I am studying heat
transfer?

Video: http://www.youtube.com/embed/GgiP9GThwtI?rel=0
Video: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BxJI_xWmBZkoblM1eU5RY2NYbEE/preview?pli=1 

 Submissions to the 2013 Candle's Creative Contest in ME4 Combustion:
(First three submissions are the winners. Each received a hard copy of McAllister's Fundamentals of Combustion Processes).

By Christian - Combustion, it blows you away!

By Wayne - Little deyas

By Maria - Flames estatue

by William - Combustion

 

Miles sent this photo by McLaren of an P1 exhaust flame

Boris - Hot air balloon in Morocco

Guillaume - First bone fire in human history - synchronistic style

Walaa selected the poem Fire by 'livin the night life'

Fire Technoloy: Knowing is not enough, We must apply

I am delighted to announce that I have been made Editor-in-Chief of Fire Technology. I take the stead from Jack Watts who expertly led the journal since the 1980s.

Fire Technology is an academic journal publishing scientific research dealing with the full range of fire hazards facing humans and the environment. It publishes original contributions, both theoretical or experimental, that provide and advocate for research and education in fire safety engineering. It is published by Springer in conjunction with the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA).

I see Fire Technology as a small journal in terms of citation impact (~0.43 in 2012) but a very large venue in terms of audience. It is probably the most read journal in the field of fire science, especially by industry. I would like to use FT to push fire science into technology; it is and should continue being The applied journal in the field.

My first step is to renew the Editorial Review Board and choose the best Associate Editors. My editorial line is to expand into emerging fire science topics (wildland fires, WUI, fire and structures, renewable energies, energy storage, etc), make the journal even more exciting, capture the best applied and novel research pieces and reward the reviewers. The immediate objective is to increase its scientific impact (~ impact factor) while maintaining its large industry readership.

Below I reproduce the content of my first editorial as Editor-in-Chief, Jan 2013.

 ----
Editorial: Knowing is Not Enough, We Must Apply
 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10694-012-0318-1
by Guillermo Rein, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Imperial College, London, UK

Jack Watts has superbly led this journal for several decades, and it is an honour for me to follow his steps and take the stead. My hope is to do nearly as well as he has done. With his help, the support of the Associate Editors, the Editorial Board, Springer staff and especially with the collective efforts of countless reviewers, I look forward a journal that provides and advocates for research and education in fire safety engineering.

Whether science precedes technology or as often observed the inverse order is found, the two of them must communicate and feed to each other if we are to reduce the worldwide burden of fire hazards. This journal wants to bridge the gap. Fire Technology will continue pushing forward the frontiers of knowledge and technology, and help reduce the unworthy obstructions to progress in fire prevention and public safety.

I would like to finish with the wise words of the German writer Goethe (1749– 1832), who said ‘‘Knowing is not enough, we must apply. Willing is not enough, we must do’’.

Inside peer review: a (top science)^3 case

I just found a very interesting exercise of transparency in peer review on a top scientific topic (climate change) in a top scientific journal (PNAS) by a top researcher (Prof Lindzen, MIT). Note that Prof Lindzen portrays a minority scientific view, he thinks climate change forecasts are uncertain and might be overestimating warming:

 

 "Lindzen-Choi ‘Special Treatment’: Is Peer Review Biased Against Nonalarmist Climate Science?" by Chip Knappenberger. June 9, 2011.

I found this after reading the NYT article "Clouds’ Effect on Climate Change Is Last Bastion for Dissenters" by J Gillis, April 30, 2012.

Disclaimer: I post this becuase it is a very interesting and unique case of how peer review works inside a top journal (for good and for bad). This does not mean I support Prof Lindzen's scientific work (my expertise is in fire dynamics).

Quenching the Reactive Earth - talk given at UC Berkeley

Quenching the Reactive Earth - Accidental Burning of Fossil-Fuels and Geoengineering

I recently gave a research seminar at the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of California where I presented some of my research ideas. I start by summarizing my academic career to date and then proceed to talk about smouldering mega fires of natural coal and peat deposits. I have termed these "accidental burning of fossil-fuels".

2010 Christmas Lecture: Fire, A story of fascination, fear and familiarity

This year University of Edinburgh Christmas Lecture was given by the winner of the Tam Dalyell Prize 2010 - Professor Jose Torero. The lecture is entitled: Fire, A story of fascination, fear and familiarity.




The video is introduced by the following text:

The complex nature of fire - which can inspire familiarity or fear - is explored in this year's Christmas Lecture.
Professor Jose Torero, winner of the 2010 Tam Dalyell science prize, examines how fire can provide welcome warmth in everyday life but, on a bigger scale, the unpredictability of fire can be terrifying.
In the past three years, Professor Torero has given more that 60 talks in more than 20 countries to a diverse range of audiences.
The engineer and his team have also conducted extensive public engagement, including outreach associated with experiments to test fire safety technology at a high-rise building in Dalmarnock, Glasgow.
In his talk, Professor Torero discusses how humans have been fascinated with fire for millions of years. He contrasts the emotions associated with fire, depending on whether it is under control or not.
The yearly Tam Dalyell Prize for Excellence in Engaging the Public with Science recognises an individual or group's work in fields including hosting school visits, talks and other public events or through publishing and broadcasting.

Networks of like-minded researchers effectively excluding newcomers

As a young academic, and hence self-named newcomer to science, I was moved from the chair by some comments by The Institute of Physics in its submission to the UK Parliamentary Committee.  Expressing its views on the disclosure of climate data from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, IOP thinks that the case "illustrate the possibility of networks of like-minded researchers effectively excluding newcomers". If this could happen in a large, prestigious and mature field as Earth Science, I fear the worst for smaller, less prestigious and immature scientific fields.

I never finished reading my copy of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Kuhn. Maybe this is a good time to continue the reading and reflect on the role of newcomers in paradigm shifts.



NOTE: Times talks about this here

When the means deform the objective (video)

This short film of the animated character Bean Maxwell caricatures a situation familiar to many of us.

Enjoy.

 - On the Level: All Bean Maxwell wants is for the picture on his foyer wall to hang level.

 

The warning is not about the end does not justify the means, but when the means deform the objective. It can be applied to research too, when we scientists engage in ridiculous efforts because our attention to the tiny details of our problem has led us to forget the frame, the larger framework, to where the true problem belongs.

An incomplete view on climate change

Prof Mike Hulme from University of East Anglia said it better: "Climate scientists get kudos from working on an issue in the public eye but with that kudos comes responsibility". His words resonate well with my overall stand on climate change.

The level of investment and prestige put on the scientific disciplines studying climate change has boosted in the last decade. This was to be expected, because they play a key role in a global and important topic that matters to society, industry and governments. Their achievements (tiny or small they might be) must be communicated, celebrated worldwide and commended with prestige, awards and further grants to continue the good work. Consequently, when errors (tiny or small they might be) are found, their professional responsibility must be required in proportion to the prestige, awards and grants gained.

In the same way, climate experts that have received awards, grants and professional prestige should not be surprised to find themselves under proportionally high pressure to review and justify once again their results.

Summary: "For everyone to whom much is given, of him shall much be required" Luke 12:48

I am not an expert in the topic, but I also have some views on it.

As a scientist doing research at the University of Edinburgh on thermal science, I see climate change as a very complex issue, dealing with an immense system, the Earth. The level of uncertainty attached to any prediction on a system this large has to be proportional to its size, immense. All my professional respect goes to climate scientists who are dealing with a very difficult problem to tackle.

As an engineer by training and an consultant to industry, I feel that most core solutions proposed so far to tackle the problem of climate change tend to lead as well towards improvements in energy efficiency, development of new technologies, alternative ways of engineering thinking and would foster the creation of new paradigms. This would be great news indeed. Even if climate change were not to be that 'fast' at the end, some proposed solutions could be good just by itself.

And as a citizen of the world, I worry that lobbies of many different colours and aims claim to understand well enough the complex scientific concepts behind climate change and dare to produce crystal-clear conclusions that might not be taking into account all the uncertainties.

Not an easy topic indeed, but worth our attention and effort, and also the pains that come from the heated debate.


NOTE: I write this on the train to London. Great views today of the English country side!

Personal Remarks about Academic Profession (I)

Seven personal views on some myths about academics (I am an academic indeed!):

I) I do not have 3 month of holidays. Indeed, last year I only took 3 weeks off.

II) I will not be teaching the same courses for 30 years. No. Indeed, I hope to change courses every three or four years to promote the development of new ideas and enrich my knowledge and thus enrich student learning experience.

III) I do not only teach. I am a researcher at heart and that is why I am in the university. It happens that teaching is a very rewarding activity for me too but it is less then half of my motivation and only takes 30% of my time (but that is because I work after hours too much).

IV) I am not stuck in the campus. I travel regularly (once or twice a month) to international destinations for meetings, conferences and presentations. Academia is no longer a lecture-based job and more frequent international mobility is required to succeed in research.

V) I am not, at least not all the time, in an ivory tower. I do solve real life problem. About 5 to 10% of my time is devoted to consultancy job to solve industry problems that come to us for expert advise. 50% of my research time is to solve problems that are taking place right now for which a solution is needed in the medium time. 70% of my sponsoring funds come from industry.

VI) I do care about progress. Research produces the knowledge that is required for tomorrow's technology; as someone said "some of my clients have not been born yet". As a scientist, I believe in the longer term investment for solutions, as an engineer I believe in the short to medium term.

VII) I do not like and I do not support professional endogamy in academic departments. Only the best should be hired. Endogamy is the enemy of long term progress and hinders excellence, at home and abroad. At a few very particular times of crisis and lack of stability, it could be somehow beneficial in the short term. Rarely useful, frequently abused.

extra) To be an academic, apparently, you need a big ego (this results from a survey to the statistically meaningful sample of my colleagues and I)

More later...

Cheers!
G.

PD: I posted this text in my blog at the Institute of Physics, but then realized that it is only open to IoP members!...