Energy and Water Appropriations

Floor Speech

ENERGY AND WATER APPROPRIATIONS -- (Senate - July 30, 2009)

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MODELING AND SIMULATION R & D

Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, during yesterday's consideration of the fiscal year 2010 Energy and Water Development Appropriations bill, I noted that the managers included certain report language related to modeling and simulation capabilities for an unconventional fossil fuels program. I would like to ask the chairman and ranking member of the subcommittee if their intent was to improve modeling and simulation for unconventional fossil energy technologies, by working in collaboration with universities and industry to establish joint programs for research and development.

Mr. DORGAN. Yes, that is our intent. This legislation would spur innovation and improve modeling and simulation efforts.

Mr. WARNER. I am pleased to learn that, because the Virginia Modeling and Simulation Center--VMASC--at Old Dominion University has extensive experience in modeling, simulation, and visualization of complex systems and events. Its capabilities include a complete suite of visualization software that can incorporate geospatial information with simulation and analysis of energy-related systems and the impact of those systems on various aspects of the environment. It also has extensive experience modeling critical infrastructure components of fossil fuel, electric and natural gas systems. VMASC has also developed capabilities for modeling policy aspects of global warming that can be adapted specifically to fossil fuel systems, and help to identify unconventional oil, natural gas, and coal resources.

VMASC has developed capabilities to model the production of unconventional resources using a combination of computational techniques that can be adapted to simulate a wide variety of scenarios associated with the fossil fuel industry and its relationship to environmental impacts.

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