International Group Of Scientists Aims To Create Simulator

It could be that of an ambitious computer projects ever conceived.

An international group of scientists to create a simulator that can reproduce everything that happens on Earth - global weather patterns and the spread of the disease to international financial transactions or traffic congestion on the roads of Milton Keynes.

Life called Earth Simulator (LES), the project aims to advance scientific understanding of what is happening on the planet, to encapsulate human actions from business and environmental forces that define the physical world.

"Many of the problems we have today - including social and economic instability, wars, the spread of disease - is linked to human behavior, but there is apparently a serious lack of understanding of how society and the economy to function, "says Helbing, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, who is chairman of the project which aims to create FuturICT simulator.

Thanks to projects like the Large Hadron Collider, particle accelerator built by CERN, scientists know more about the early universe than we do on our own planet, Dr. Helbing says.

What is needed is a knowledge accelerator, colliding the different branches of knowledge, "he said.

"Discover the hidden laws and processes at the base of a company's most pressing scientific Grand Challenge of our time."

This would result in SLE. It could be infectious diseases such as influenza virus, methods for detecting climate change or even a spot hints of the impending financial crisis, "he says.

But how huge this system?

First, it should be populated with information - much of it - covers the full range of activities on this planet, "Dr. Helbing says.

It would also be powered by the composition of the supercomputer yet-to-be-built are able to carry more chewing is a mammoth scale.

Even if the hardware is not built yet, a lot of information has already been created, "he says.

For example, skin warming project, led by the U.S. space agency NASA show the creation of a large sensor networks to collect climatic data of air, land, sea and space.

In addition, Dr. Helbing and his team have already identified over 70 online sources of information believed to be also used for Wikipedia, Google Maps and the UK Government data warehouse Data.gov.uk.

Just a lot of data is not sufficient to build a credible simulation of the planet, argues Warden. "Economics and Sociology has never managed to produce theories with strong predictive power over the past century, despite a lot of data collection. I'm skeptical that more data sets will mark a big change," he said.

"It's not that we do not know enough about many problems the world faces climate change to extreme poverty is that we do not do something about the information we have, he argues.

Regardless of the challenges the project faces the greatest danger is not trying to use the tools we have now - and future - to improve our understanding of global trends in social-economic development, "said Dr. Helbing.

"In recent years it has become clear example that we need better indicators as gross domestic product to assess the development of society and well-being," he argues.

At its core, ERP is working on improving methods for measuring the state of society, he says, what matters for health, education and the environment. "And last but not least, the happiness."