A distributed co-operative problem solving environment

Abstract

Scientific research is often multidisciplinary in nature and hence large projects are frequently collaborative with participants from several separate research centres. Rather than being restricted to infrequent dissemination of results and meetings a framework is described for embedding scientific computing applications within a collaborative problem solving environment. This allows users to combine their expertise in an interactive visual environment. Separate users can collaboratively steer and visualize data from a numerical simulation by embedding the simulation within the IRIS Explorer visualization system. By making use of this system the user has access to the COVISA toolkit which facilitates collaboration between separate users of IRIS Explorer. The flexibility of this system makes it straightforward to visualize and control as many aspects of the solution process as are desired. © 2002 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.