The Dakota software (http://dakota.sandia.gov/) delivers advanced parametric analysis techniques enabling quantification of margins and uncertainty, risk analysis, model calibration, and design exploration with computational models. Its methods include optimization, uncertainty quantification, parameter estimation, and sensitivity analysis, which may be used individually or as components within surrogate-based and other advanced strategies.

Author: Brian M. Adams, William J. Bohnhoff, Robert A. Canfield, Wesley P. Coomber, Keith R. Dalbey, Mohamed S. Ebeida, John P. Eddy, Michael S. Eldred, Gianluca Geraci, Russell W. Hooper, Patricia D. Hough, Kenneth T. Hu, John D. Jakeman, Carson Kent, Mohammad Khalil, Kathryn A. Maupin, Jason A. Monschke, Teresa Portone, Elliott M. Ridgway, Ahmad A. Rushdi, D. Thomas Seidl, J. Adam Stephens, Laura P. Swiler, Anh Tran, Dena M. Vigil, Timothy M. Wildey, and Justin G. Winokur; with Friedrich Menhorn and Xiaoshu Zeng

The Reference Manual documents all the input keywords that can appear in a Dakota input file to configure a Dakota study. Its organization closely mirrors the structure of dakota.input.summary. For more information see Dakota Input Specification. For information on software structure, refer to the Developers Manual [3], and for a tour of Dakota features and capabilities, including a tutorial, refer to the User's Manual [4].

Dakota 6.14 and newer include a refreshed Examples Library, ranging from examples of Dakota input files and basic studies through complete case studies. These can be found in binary distributions in dakota/share/dakota/examples/official (dakota/dakota-examples in source distributions). Legacy examples, including many from the Dakota software manuals appear in other directories in dakota/share/dakota/examples (dakota/examples for source).

How to Use this Manual

To learn how to run Dakota from the command line, see Running Dakota
To learn to how to restart Dakota studies, see Restarting Dakota Studies
To learn about the Dakota restart utility, see The Dakota Restart Utility

To find more information about a specific keyword

Use the search box at the top right (currently only finds keyword names)
Browse the Keywords tree on the left navigation pane
Look at the Dakota Input Specification
Navigate through the keyword pages, starting from the Keywords Area

To find more information about a Dakota related topic

Browse the Topics Area on the left navigation pane
Navigate through the topics pages, starting from the Topics Area

A small number of examples are included (see Sample Input Files) along with a description of the test problems (see Test Problems).

A bibliography for the Reference Manual is provided in Bibliographic References