The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is soliciting innovative research proposals in the area of Uncertainty Quantification (UQ) methods for large-scale Department of Defense (DoD) systems. Proposed research should investigate innovative approaches that enable revolutionary advances in science, devices, or systems. Specifically excluded is research that primarily results in evolutionary improvements to the existing state of practice.
The Enabling Quantification of Uncertainty in Physical Systems (EQUiPS) program will provide a mathematical framework and tools for the propagation and management of computational uncertainty from different sources in the modeling of complex scientific and engineering systems. The program will focus, in particular, on systems with multi-scale coupled physics and uncertain parameters in extremely high-dimensional spaces. The program will develop the following capabilities:
- New methods for forward and inverse modeling to scale to high-dimensional multiscale/multi-physics systems;
- A quantitative understanding of uncertainties and inadequacies in the models of physical systems themselves; and
- A completely new paradigm for stochastic design and decision making for complex systems.
EQUiPS will be executed in three different Thrust Areas (TAs):
- TA1: Scalable Algorithms
- TA2: Model-Form Uncertainty
- TA3: Design and Decision Making under Uncertainty
The program will be executed in two 18 month phases. Proposer teams must simultaneously address all three TAs. The application and design domain should be specified by the proposers; there is flexibility in the choice of these application problems as long as the proposed applications consider multi-physics/scale physical phenomena in DoD systems. Example application areas of UQ techniques might include:
- Aerospace structures
- Engines
- Marine vehicles
- Radar and electromagnetic scattering
- Material discovery
- Biological systems