Taxonomy of Multiscale Computing Communities

Abstract

We present a concise and comprehensive review of research communities which perform multiscale computing. We provide an overview of communities in a range of domains, and compare these communities to assess the level of use of multiscale methods in different research domains. Additionally, we characterize several areas where inter-disciplinary multiscale collaboration or the introduction of common and reusable methods could be particularly beneficial. We conclude that multiscale computing has become increasingly popular in recent years, that different communities adopt radically different organizational approaches, and that simulations on a length scale of a few metres and a time scale of a few hours can be found in many of the multiscale research domains. Sharing multiscale methods specifically geared towards these scales between communities may therefore be particularly beneficial.