[eurolisp] Fwd: Lisp (and Prolog, and a bit of KR) job, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, UK

[Arthur Lemmens]

Some of you may be interested in the following Lisp job announcement
(forwarded from comp.lang.lisp).

Arthur

---- Doorgestuurd Usenet-bericht ----
Van: Hamish Harvey <hamish at hamishharvey.com>
Newsgroepen: comp.lang.lisp
Onderwerp: Lisp (and Prolog, and a bit of KR) job, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, UK
Datum: Fri, 08 Jul 2005 12:44:37 +0100
URL: news://<dalov5$kmp$1@ucsnew1.ncl.ac.uk>

> I imagine that, regardless of the resurgent status of Lisp, jobs are still
> thin enough on the ground for job notices to be welcomed here!
>
> The School: http://www.ceg.ncl.ac.uk/
> The University: http://www.ncl.ac.uk/
> The job: http://www.ncl.ac.uk/vacancies/vacancy.phtml?ref=D528R
>
> The Earth Systems Engineering group in the School of Civil Engineering and
> Geosciences at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, are developing
> software to support flood risk management. The core of this software is a
> computation engine capable of taking definitions of rather complex,
> multi-dimensional calculations and enacting them. The computation engine
> will implement a domain specific language (DSL) designed to support the
> expression of these computations in a declarative way. This language and
> computation engine are being designed to provide the core of a wide range
> of decision support systems from tools to support interactive analysis of
> ill-specified problems to flood forecasting systems which depend on the
> continuous, unattended assimilation of incoming data.
>
> The calculations involved in flood risk management involve embedding
> numerical simulation of (parts of) the flooding system within layers of
> higher level calculations to derive measures of flood risk (e.g. in
> expected annual damage), or change in flood risk resulting from particular
> interventions, or the sensitivity of particular outputs to uncertainty,
> or .... The goal, in general, is to maximise the value of investment in
> measures to address flood risk. Aspirations in the flood risk management
> community far exceed what is feasible using current technology. To the
> extent that such calculations are currently possible, they are achieved
> using combinations of software packages and a great deal of munging of data
> files. This approach is tedious and error-prone. It almost completely
> obscures the structure and meaning of the underlying calcualtions, imposing
> huge cognitive load on those undertaking them. It will not scale much
> beyond the complexity of problem currently being tackled.
>
> The DSL under development by contrast allows these calculations, in their
> full multi-dimensional glory, to be expressed succinctly in a form which is
> amenable to human understanding but which can be compiled into an
> executable form. Humans are more involved in defining calculations than
> doing them. The language is declarative, based around a formalisation of
> the concept of a "reference frame", which allows the structure of a
> calculation (and of data sets) to be expressed explicitly (in imperative
> implementations this structure is implicit in the control structure of the
> code).
>
> The design of the semantics of the language is well progressed, but subject
> to refinement as implementation proceeds. A limited prototype computation
> engine exists which implements basic aspects of this language. The position
> available is for a software developer to join me in working on this
> prototype, which is written in Common Lisp (making extensive use of Lisp's
> code-which-writes-code-which-writes-code capabilities). The work will
> involve significant creative input at the abstract, conceptual level as
> well as in translating from this abstract level into working code. It will
> also involve applying the developing prototype to realistic flood risk
> analysis case studies.
>
> Initial prototyping is using an ad hoc, s-expression-based concrete syntax
> for the language. A further thread of development is to express the
> language in a full knowledge representation language (which may dictate
> changes to the abstract syntax). Part of the purpose of developing the
> language is to support the expression of complex calculations succinctly in
> a knowledge representation language. This language will then provide a
> point of integration of a wide range of tools which operate in terms of the
> structure of the calculation definitions, of which the computation engine
> is but one.
>
> A draft report on the software is available. This has been written for an
> audience of flood risk management professionals, not computer scientists or
> software developers. It still needs a great deal of polishing, but
> nonetheless sets out the breadth of the vision behind this project. The
> draft is temporarily available at
>
> http://www.floodrisknet.org.uk/Members/hamish/draft-framework-report.pdf
>
> Funding is initially available for two years, and the appointment is fixed
> term. The intention is to obtain additional funds to continue this work for
> some time, though this is subject to the vagaries of academic funding. My
> own position is also dependent on obtaining this funding, so I am highly
> motivated in this regard!
>
> The software will be released under an open source license in due course.
>
> Please feel free to ask questions (about the job or the software). I will be
> away for the first half of next week, so a failure to respond immediately
> should not be taken as a lack of interest!
>
> Cheers,
> Hamish
>