I have to admit a great measure of sympathy for the IT populace at large, when it is confronted by the barrage of hype around grid technology, particularly within the enterprise. Individual vendors have attempted to plant their flags in the notionally virgin technological territory and proclaim it as their own, using terms such as grid, autonomic, self-healing, self-managing, adaptive, utility, and so forth. Analysts, well, analyze and try to make sense of it all, and in the process each independently creates his or her own map of this terra incognita, naming it policy-based computing, organic computing, and so on. Unfortunately, this serves only to further muddy the waters for most people. All of these terms capture some aspect of the big picture—they all describe parts of solutions that seek to address essentially the same problems in similar ways—but they’re never quite synonymous.

Modeling complex social interaction creates a number of challenges for the strategic analyst. Firstly, the fundamental basis of an operational model has to be based on rational and verifiable metrics, but recognize that human interaction in the real world is often irrational and is rarely verifiable. Secondly, the evolving discourse between factions almost always influences the ongoing process of interaction — often creating entirely new modes of interaction as the scenario unfolds. Our solution was to continue to base the Peace Support Operations Model (PSOM) Operational Game on verifiable metrics and create an interaction process designed to include those modes of interaction that are ill-suited to structured analysis and better addressed by processes that can adapt to shifts in strategic emphasis. The PSOM Strategic Interaction Process thus follows the same turn-based design as the Operational Game, but creates a framework for political interaction and the recording of faction intent as the game proceeds.

The Pedirka, Simpson and western Eromanga basins in central Australia have had a chequered exploration history which has seen only 42 wells drilled across a study area of ~210 000 km2. Exploration initially focused on conventional hydrocarbons from the 1950s–1980s, before shifting towards coal seam gas (CSG) opportunities in the mid-2000s. Active petroleum systems have been proven in the region by a non-commercial oil discovery at Poolowanna 1 in 1977, and by several wells that showed evidence of residual oil columns. CSG exploration programs have confirmed the presence of thick, marginally mature coal intervals on the flanks of the basins, but are yet to evaluate the CSG potential of the deeper troughs. Geoscience Australia, the Northern Territory Geological Survey and the South Australian Department for Energy and Mining have been collaborating on the Australia’s Future Energy Resources project to undertake an assessment of the resource potential for conventional and unconventional hydrocarbons, and the geological storage of CO2 (GSC) potential of the greater Pedirka region. The project has applied a play-based exploration approach to qualitatively assess the resource potential of the region. The Carboniferous to Cretaceous stratigraphic interval was divided into 14 plays which were evaluated for the presence of sediment-hosted energy resources through post-drill analysis, gross depositional environment mapping and common risk segment mapping. The analysis identified energy resources and GSC potential across multiple plays and locations within the study area. These results demonstrate, that while the region is underexplored, it should not be overlooked by future exploration activities.