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Key challenges in application of Epoch-Era Analysis (EEA) up to this point involve eliciting a potentially large number of relevant epochs and eras, conducting analysis across these epochs and eras, and extracting useful and actionable information from the analyses. For many problem formulations it is not feasible to evaluate systems across all or even a large fraction of potential eras. Research in the areas of big data analysis and visual analytics both have led to techniques that could be leveraged to mitigate these challenges. It is hypothesized in this research that augmenting the traditional EEA approach with new analytic and interactive techniques will fundamentally enable new capabilities and insights to be derived from EEA, resulting in superior dynamic strategies for resilient systems.
The enabling areas of research under investigation include data reduction methods, online analytical processing (OLAP), human interaction methods, and search algorithms. Prototypes of these methods are demonstrated in an interactive web-based tool that allows the analysis of various system alternatives across alternate future contexts and needs. Future work will further extend interactive techniques to allow for improved elicitation, analyses and decisionmaking for early phase conceptual design of complex systems.