Data Farming in support of NATO operations - methodology and proof-of-concept

Data Farming is a process that has been developed to support decision-makers by answering questions that are not currently addressed. It uses an inter-disciplinary approach that includes modeling and simulation, high performance computing and statistical analysis to examine questions of interest with large number of alternatives. Data Farming allows for the examination of uncertain events with numerous possible outcomes and provides the capability of executing enough experiments so that both overall and unexpected results may be captured and examined for insights. In 2010, the NATO Science and Technology Organization started the three-year Task Group “Data Farming in Support of NATO” to assess and document the data farming methodology to be used for decision support. Two case studies were performed as proof-of-concept explorations to demonstrate the power of Data Farming. The paper describes the Data Farming methodology as an iterative process and summarizes the results of the case studies.