Complex Adaptive System Composition And Design Environment (CASCADE) | Apply Online

CASCADE (DARPA BAA 16-11) - Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

What was the CASCADE opportunity?

CASCADE (Complex Adaptive System Composition And Design Environment) was a DARPA Defense Sciences Office research opportunity under DARPA BAA 16-11. It sought research proposals aimed at fundamentally improving how complex adaptive systems are designed, with an emphasis on new design capabilities rather than incremental improvements to existing engineering workflows.

Which government organization issued this opportunity?

The opportunity was issued by the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), specifically DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), within DARPA's Defense Sciences Office (DSO).

What problem space was CASCADE trying to address?

CASCADE focused on the challenge of designing complex adaptive systems: systems that are dynamic, change over time, respond to their environments, and remain functional under stress, disruption, or uncertainty. The program aimed to create new, more powerful ways to design, reason about, compose, and validate such systems before and during deployment.

What does DARPA mean by "complex adaptive systems" in this context?

In the CASCADE description, complex adaptive systems are characterized by dynamics and adaptation over time, environment-driven responses, and resilience under uncertainty or disruption. The solicitation emphasized systems where behavior can emerge from interactions among parts and across levels of the system.

What was DARPA looking for beyond "better tools"?

DARPA signaled it wanted a step-change in design: new ways to reason about, compose, and validate complex systems, not just improvements to existing tools. The goal was to enable fundamentally stronger design workflows for adaptive, resilient systems.

What was the central technical emphasis of CASCADE?

A central emphasis was the development and use of innovative mathematical abstraction and composition methods. This meant building rigorous frameworks to represent system structure, behavior, and interactions in a unified way, then enabling composition of smaller parts into larger, multi-layered systems without losing fidelity or understanding.

What is meant by "mathematical abstraction and composition" in practical terms?

Practically, it refers to methods that can formally represent a system and its interactions and allow designers to combine (compose) components into larger assemblies while retaining clear, rigorous reasoning about behavior and performance. The program description highlighted unified representations of structure, behavior, and interactions.

Why did CASCADE emphasize spanning multiple spatiotemporal scales?

The opportunity highlighted multi-scale behavior to target systems where important outcomes emerge from interactions at different sizes and time horizons, such as fast local reactions producing slow global shifts, or component-level dynamics shaping system-level adaptation.

Was CASCADE focused on capturing emergence, feedback, and resilience?

Yes. The description indicated interest in principled approaches that can capture emergence, feedback, adaptation, and resilience as core features of the design and reasoning process, rather than treating them only as after-the-fact simulation outcomes.

What kinds of approaches were explicitly not of interest?

The solicitation specifically excluded proposals centered on familiar modeling and simulation approaches commonly used in defense and systems engineering, including federated models for military systems, single-domain or limited-domain network models, discrete-event simulation, Monte Carlo modeling, and SysML-style model-based systems engineering as typically practiced.

Were federated modeling approaches acceptable?

No. The opportunity explicitly excluded proposals centered on federated models for military systems as part of the list of familiar modeling and simulation approaches DARPA did not want for this program.

Were discrete-event simulation or Monte Carlo methods acceptable?

No. Discrete-event simulation and Monte Carlo modeling were explicitly listed among the approaches excluded from the solicitation's intended scope.

Was SysML-based model-based systems engineering within scope?

No. SysML-style model-based systems engineering "as typically practiced" was explicitly excluded, reflecting the program's intent to move beyond conventional MBSE approaches.

Did CASCADE allow single-domain or limited-domain network models?

No. The opportunity excluded single-domain or limited-domain network models as part of the set of familiar approaches it did not intend to fund.

Was the program aimed at software architecture tooling or electronic design automation?

The solicitation ruled out abstraction and composition approaches whose primary application is software and/or electronics. This signaled that CASCADE was aimed at broader system design challenges, rather than being primarily a software architecture or electronic design program.

Was CASCADE intended to fund incremental improvements to the current state of practice?

No. The opportunity description emphasized that it was not intended to fund incremental or evolutionary improvements. It aimed for genuinely new foundational approaches to cross-domain mathematical and compositional system design.

What type of research did CASCADE aim to support?

CASCADE can be summarized as a DARPA call for high-risk, high-payoff research intended to reinvent how designers mathematically represent, compose, and reason about complex adaptive systems across scales.

What was the CFDA number associated with this opportunity?

The opportunity was associated with CFDA number 12.910, titled Defense Research Sciences.

What was the funding type?

The listing described the funding as discretionary.

What award instruments were available?

The opportunity allowed multiple award mechanisms, including cooperative agreements, procurement contracts, and other instruments. This is typical for DARPA programs and can vary depending on the performer and the nature of the work.

Who was eligible to apply?

Eligibility was described as unrestricted, meaning it was open to a wide range of applicant types, subject to any additional eligibility language in the full announcement.

When was the opportunity posted and when did it close?

The announcement was posted and created on November 23, 2015, and it had a closing date of February 4, 2016.

Did the public listing specify the award ceiling or expected number of awards?

No. The public listing did not specify an award ceiling or the expected number of awards. This can occur in broad agency announcements where final funding levels and scope depend on submission quality, relevance, and evolving program plans.

What made CASCADE different from conventional modeling and simulation programs?

The description drew a clear line between CASCADE and standard modeling/simulation efforts by excluding several common approaches and emphasizing novel, cross-domain mathematical abstraction and composition methods that support rigorous reasoning about adaptive, resilient behavior across scales.