MishMash

Tsunami simulation

The Danish Hydraulic Institute have made a pass at simulating the Tsunami of 26 December. DivX videos of simulation output available. The jaggy nature of the tidal wave as it nears the shore presumably suggest that some significant numerical errors will be building up (I'm no expert, mind).

UI is Better than AI

In an article about the differences between desktop and server based RSS aggregators, William Grosso coins the phrase

UI is Better than AI.

which is a pleasingly catchy encapsulation of an idea which I was thinking about during my first weblogging experiment, and fits with a theme which I have returned to recently. The first of the above linked articles includes two quotes from a paper in the Journal of Hydraulic Research (the IAHR web site is a royal PITA, with Frames-and-Flash based navigation which doesn't work in Konqueror, and doesn't allow deep linking without picking frames out of context). Since that post is on a weblog which in theory could disappear at any time, I repeat them here.

Knowledge based systems may support certain tasks, but if the task is restructured, the need of much of the knowledge about the complexity might become obsolete. Much of the knowledge which is still needed now is simply an artefact of certain solution methods or of the use of certain computer programs. Modification of the solution process and improvement of the tools tend to make the task less knowledge-intensive. [p. 91, van Zuylen, Dee, Mynett, Rodenhuis, Moll, Ogink Most, Gerritsen, Verboom (1994) "Hydroinformatics at Delft Hydraulics", J. Hydraulic Research, Extra Issue: Hydroinformatics]

…

Tools were proposed to provide knowledge in a suitable form ... Once it became clear what kind of tools could be implemented, the developer and the expert/user restructured the task in such a way that it became easier, less complex and less knowledge-intensive. A user interface was then developed for this task. Clearly, a straightforward development of a user interface containing a knowledge base would have resulted in a sub-optimal product, since the product would have supported an obsolete task. [p. 93, van Zuylen, Dee, Mynett, Rodenhuis, Moll, Ogink Most, Gerritsen, Verboom (1994) "Hydroinformatics at Delft Hydraulics", J. Hydraulic Research, Extra Issue: Hydroinformatics]

Artificial Intelligence? Pah.

Long ago Dad introduced me to a quote, which he believes to have been first uttered by a head of the AI group at the University of Edinburgh.

Artificial it may be, Intelligence it most certainly isn't. [Source unknown]

I have in the past found Google to be quite effective at locating sources of quotes for me. In this case it is of no assistance whatsoever. If anyone has any leads on this, I'd love to know. If not, you heard it here first.

Spread your wings and fly, little meme.

Exploratory Modelling

An interesting over coffee conversation just had. The context was how one might go about constructing models of geomorphological systems, and how the qualitative descriptions of geomorphologists might be tested and informed by interactive development of quantitative expressions of those descriptions.

Grep tells me that I didn't use the phrase exploratory modelling in my PhD thesis, which I thought I had. Let's post it here.

Google tells me that it's not new. Which is great; people to talk to. Why didn't I run this search before? Zarine Kemp looks to be doing some interesting work, and has some publications I need to follow up.

Comments from Ari Jolma on my Open Source paper

My recent paper on the potential value of open source software in Hydroinformatics has stimulated another response (in addition, that is, to those published in the Journal from Profs. Mike Abbott and Jean Cunge). I will respond to Ari Jolma's comments here quoting, with permission, from his email.

I read with great interest your paper in J. Hydroinformatics. There surely is a need for free software and open and useful standards in Hydroinformatics.

The word "useful" in this sentence, apparently so innocuous, is critical, I think. I managed to resist all but the briefest comment on this subject in my thesis, because it was clearly off topic, but that brief comment I did feel compelled to make. Interoperability, Not Standards is Clay Shirky's mantra. Shirky was talking about premature standardisation in the context of Peer to Peer software. His conclusions seem valid for the hydroinformatics world too, however.