Friday, January 18, 2008

Outsourcing modelling to CSE vendors

In order to properly outsource a modelling job to a vendor , I believe the greatest obstacle is setting down the requirements of the industrial model in a technical specification or document which is understandable by both parties.Ideally it should be:
  1. A proper synopsis of the project
  2. A general overview of the natural/industrial behavior which is to be modeled
  3. Numerical details/dimensions of the system to be modeled
  4. Environmental conditions in which the system is expected to operate (e.g: heat transfers)
  5. Include online data-streams which can be easily accessed by modelers at any time to gauge
  • Better understand which physical phenomena are involved in the system
  • Develop Mathematical formulae of the physical phenomena
  • Test accuracy of their model once developed
  • Ensure accuracy is within specifications set by client
It would be best if the entire outsourcing of CSE services could be conducted entirely online, thus the requirement of a Web Application to handle such requests and ensure both parties on the same wavelength is needed.I suggest such an application be:
  1. hosted on a LAMP server
  2. built on the CakePHP framework www.cakephp.org
The application should have the following features:
  • Allow clients to add new model projects
  • Accept Flickr/externally hosted images/content posted by client
  • Accept CSV-formatted Datasets which the model should be tested-against
  • Allow CSE service provider ability to bid for project
  • prioritize each request based on project length
I'll probably add more features to this list in my next post.

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