VECMAtk: A Scalable Verification, Validation and Uncertainty Quantification Toolkit for Scientific Simulations

TL;DR

VECMAtk is a comprehensive, scalable toolkit that facilitates verification, validation, sensitivity analysis, and uncertainty quantification for scientific simulations across various domains and computing platforms.

Contribution

The paper introduces new functional and performance enhancements to VECMAtk, including additional components, application examples, and practical patterns for UQ/SA and V&V.

Findings

Successfully applied to seven different scientific domains.

Enhanced performance and usability on multi-petascale computers.

Detailed example of COVID-19 modeling demonstrates practical utility.

Abstract

We present the VECMA toolkit (VECMAtk), a flexible software environment for single and multiscale simulations that introduces directly applicable and reusable procedures for verification, validation (V&V), sensitivity analysis (SA) and uncertainty quantification (UQ). It enables users to verify key aspects of their applications, systematically compare and validate the simulation outputs against observational or benchmark data, and run simulations conveniently on any platform from the desktop to current multi-petascale computers. In this sequel to our paper on VECMAtk which we presented last year, we focus on a range of functional and performance improvements that we have introduced, cover newly introduced components, and applications examples from seven different domains such as conflict modelling and environmental sciences. We also present several implemented patterns for UQ/SA and V&V, and guide the reader through one example concerning COVID-19 modelling in detail.