Lancaster University Centre for e-Science
The general objectives of the Lancaster Centre for e-Science are:
to accelerate the development of a new kind of computing and data management infrastructure for the social sciences, and to support the increasingly national and global collaborations emerging in many areas of science.
These activities will enable many researchers in management, social science and related fields to build models that acknowledge the full complexity of many social and economic phenomena. Research at the forefront of quantitative social science requires comprehensive approaches to model complex observational social and economic processes. A comprehensive model is one in which many of the interdependencies in the process are incorporated. E-Science will also lead to the creation of better evidence based substantive theory, more reliable forecasts, the determination of the most influential policy instruments and thus it will improve policy effectiveness. The computing power needed to use multiple large and complex data sets, and to use recent methodological developments in order to disentangle the multiple mechanisms at work in comprehensive models, are only just becoming available. The increase in computational power offered by e-Science promises to open the door to a new world.
For more information and details about one of e-Science's projects, see the ReDReSS website.
