1. 0 Strategic Information
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- 1.2.2 Earth Systems Science Data Repositories
- 1.2.3 State and Industry Relationships
- 1.3 Role and Capabilities
- 2.0 Participation in the National Facility Program
- 2.2 Payment for Resource Share
- 3.0 Participation in the APAC Grid Program
1.2 Strategic RelationshipsTPAC have formed a number of strategic relationships with state, national and international organizations, including APAC partners, to support TPAC’s two focus areas. Letters of support are attached in Appendix A. 1.2.1 Earth Systems Science models.National relationships: ARCNESS: The ARC Network for Earth System Science (ARCNESS) is a collaboration of researchers with the objective “to build the Australian Research capability in Earth Systems Science into a cohesive Network incorporating the skills, tools and capacity necessary to develop responses to climate change and climate impacts on Australia, Antarctica and the southern hemisphere”. This network consists of 154 registered participants from 24 national organisations, and 64 registered participants from 49 international organisations spanning 15 countries. Together they represent a diverse range of disciplines including atmospheric science, oceanography, biology, cryospheric science and the social science. Three staff members of TPAC are registered participants in this network, and A.Prof. Bindoff leads the Information Technology node of the network (and is a principal investigator in this RN). The IT node has a focus on enabling technologies. TPAC’s position within ARCNESS provides a unique opportunity for APAC to both fulfil the computing and data access requirements for this large community of collaborating researchers, and to guide this community towards best practice. ACCESS: The proposed ACCESS program is primarily a partnership between the CSIRO, Bureau of Meteorology and Australian universities. The resources likely to be committed to this project are estimated to be about 50 effective full time staff rising to 70 staff by the 5th year of the program. TPAC’s collaboration with ACCESS will enable the ACCESS model and its associated infrastructure to be supported on the APAC National Facility and partner facilities and ensure that ACCESS is sufficiently general to work on a wide range of system architectures. TPAC will provide support to users outside CSIRO and Bureau of Meteorology (eg ACE CRC, AAD, ARCNESS and universities) in the use and installation of the ACCESS model. Currently, TPAC is the only organization that is planning on providing support for the ACCESS model to the ESS community in Australian universities and the TPAC partners. AusCOM: TPAC is a key proponent of the AusCOM program to develop a coupled ocean/sea-ice model for use by the Australian research community. This program is an informal collaboration with CSIRO, BMRC, ACE CRC, universities and TPAC. TPAC is developing the Sea-ice model, undertaking the coupling (using the OASIS package from CERFACS) and configuring the ocean code to the AusCOM specification. TPAC will also port the AusCOM model to relevant APAC partner facilities, and provide user support and training through its ARCNESS linkages. TPAC will also coordinate, and provide unified access to, digital repositories of relevant earth systems science data. International Relationships Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, NOAA, USA: The oceanography and climate science research community has a history of collaboration. This collaborative spirit is currently evident in the development of the Australian Community Ocean Model (AusCOM) and the proposed Australian Community Climate Earth-System Simulator (ACCESS). Both of these projects are based around the Modular Ocean Model (MOM) supplied by the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL) based at Princeton University. TPAC has a good working relationship with GFDL, and in particular the lead architect of the MOM code, Dr Stephen Griffies, TPAC has co-sponsored a sabbatical for Dr Griffies, and funded his participation in national ocean modeling workshops. Australian researchers have contributed strongly to the physics, meshes, porting and optimization of this model. OASIS/Prism: The AusCOM and proposed ACCESS projects utilise the Ocean Atmosphere Sea Ice Soil (OASIS) coupler developed by CERFACS, France. TPAC has a strong relationship with the OASIS development team, being early adopters and testers of new code releases, adding functionality to OASIS and distributing code changes back to the development team. Furthermore, TPAC has been involved in modifying several stand alone Earth Systems Science component models to integrate with the OASIS coupler, and again distributing the code modifications back to the relevant development teams. 1.2.2 Earth Systems Science Data RepositoriesNational Relationships BlueNET: BlueNET is funded by the Systemic Information Infrastructure initiative (~$3.5M over two years) to identify and curate a wide variety of marine data which can either be hosted by the BlueNET nodes or forwarded to the AODC-JF (see below). The BlueNET data will be made available through the Oceans Portal (currently under development). TPAC and BlueNET will collaborate on the local BlueNET node at the University of Tasmania and will provide compute and storage facilities for hosting BlueNET data, particularly for large marine data. Parts of the TPAC Earth Systems Science library, where appropriate, are to be included in the BlueNET data. The staff of BlueNet and TPAC are likely to be co-located on the University Campus and the Director of TPAC is on the BlueNET steering committee. Australian Oceanographic Data Centre Joint Facility : The AODC-JF is a whole-of-government approach to oceanographic data management. It is a consortium of six Commonwealth marine agencies (Australian Institute of Marine Science, Australian Antarctic Division, Bureau of Meteorology, CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research, Geoscience Australia, and the Royal Australian Navy Directorate of Oceanography & Meteorology) with support from the National Oceans Office. It will provide an operational distributed facility to manage ocean data for national and international obligations. A Technical Committee has been set up to oversee technology developments and establish and adopt standards. In addition, a number of Technical Working Groups have been established (e.g. for metadata, OPeNDAP, Web Feature Services). An early component under development is a Marine Catalogue – which will form a key part of the Oceans Portal being developed by the National Oceans Office. As part of this work, a marine community profile of the ISO 19115 metadata standard has been developed. This is likely to be adopted at international level through the International Oceanographic Commission. TPAC has strong links with AODC-JF through both the BlueNet project and AUKEGGS collaboration. This will facilitate TPAC progress towards emerging international metadata standards. International relationships AUKEGGS: The Australian-UK Exploitation of Grid middleware and Geospatial Standards (AUKEGGS) collaboration (UK £40k) brings together several major Earth System Science data providers in the two countries (TPAC, AODC-JF, BADC, BODC). In addition, the collaboration includes key developers and experts in ISO/OGC international standards for geographic information. A named deliverable of the project is a demonstrator data Grid linking the climate data resources of TPAC with the UK. This will be one of the first international data Grids offering seamless discovery and access to Earth Systems Science data. These standards will become increasingly important for distributed Earth Systems Science data infrastructures; AUKEGGS participation ensures TPAC remains abreast of developments. In addition, the AUKEGGS collaboration emphasises a standards-based service-oriented architecture, with a particular focus on the web service interfaces of the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC). TPAC staff participated in both the AUKEGGS kickoff meeting (held in conjunction with the second SEEGrid conference, Canberra, Mar 2005) and a recent workshop (Edinburgh, Sept 2005). NERC DataGrid: The UK-based NERC DataGrid (NDG) is developing a grid infrastructure to provide uniform discovery and access to a wide range of environmental (eg Oceans, Atmospheres, Marine) data in the UK. To achieve this, a rich metadata taxonomy has been developed, including a semantic data model for the climate sciences (the Climate Science Modelling Language, CSML). CSML draws on emerging ISO standards for geospatial data and enables data virtualisation through a wrapper/mediator architecture. TPAC has strong links with the NERC DataGrid. Through the AUKEGGS collaboration, it is intended to federate TPAC with NERC DataGrid for both data discovery and access – the first such expansion of the infrastructure internationally. TPAC is developing discovery-level metadata for its holdings, and will deploy NDG middleware as it becomes available to enable data access through NDG. A secondment from NDG to TPAC is progressing these activities. OPeNDAP: The TPAC digital library is built on OPeNDAP (Open-source Project for a Network Data Access Protocol, University of Rhode Island), a protocol and associated software package which makes local data accessible at remote locations regardless of local storage format. The OPeNDAP software required some modifications to enable it to serve secure data sets from behind local firewalls. Our version of the OPeNDAP software can be usefully deployed at other organisations where similar access restrictions apply. These modifications were fed back to the open-source community for ongoing support. The TPAC digital library has become a member of the National Virtual Ocean Data System (NVODS) - a framework for the distribution and analysis of oceanographic (and other) data. The digital library is also listed on the Global Change Master Directory (GCMD). 1.2.3 State and Industry RelationshipsSonarData Pty Ltd: SonarData is a private company based in Hobart (Tasmania), specialising in the development of advanced processing and visualisation software of sonar measurements used for fisheries monitoring and research. This company has captured 80% of this niche market. A new product is being developed for the visualisation of scientific data, at an investment of ~$1.5M. Sonardata have recognised that future of scientific visualisation and discovery will be based on distributed data repositories based on the geospatial ‘feature types’ framework of emerging ISO standards. Following discussion with TPAC, SonarData has moved towards a distributed web-accessible data sources model for their software development, delivering several benefits. First Sonardata can use the TPAC ESS digital repository as a test repository during early product development, provide early releases of the software for use by TPAC scientists and PhD students for market research, and, most significantly, gain early insight into the value and flexibility of the product prior to commercial release for undertaking real scientific visualisation. TPAC has offered to provide OPeNDAP clients, and, perhaps more significantly, clients for use with Globus Toolkit4. Insight4: A Hobart-based software development company who developed the TPAC Oceans and Climate Digital Library portal. The portal was implemented within the GridSphere portal framework – an Java based open-source framework. This was a considerable undertaking by Insight4 (approx. 3 months development time), and enabled them to develop strong J2EE and portal development skills along with an increased awareness of Grid computing and its application towards both scientific and commercial computing. Insight4 has established strong relationships with international software developers, such as the GridSphere Portal Framework team, through which they plan to establish commercial ties and opportunities. TPAC are making the portal software available under a BSD licensing arrangement, and BMRC is planning to use the portal under their BlueLink project. Hydro Tasmania: TPAC (and partners) has recently completed a contract (~$350k) for the downscaling of climate change scenarios for the 21st Century to allow fine scale regional analysis of the impact of climate change on precipitation and evaporation over the Tasmania land mass. This project has wider applications to other industry sectors within the Tasmania economy (see below). Hydro Tasmania expects to repeat this analysis in 2007/2008, when improved predictions become available. State Government: The State Government is investing strongly (~$7M) in the Tasmanian Research Education Network (supported by AREN funds) by providing access to the states fibre optic network with in the state and also across Bass Strait. Department Primary Industry Water and Environment (DPIWE) have expressed strong interest in further analysis of the downscaled scenarios of Tasmanian climate in the 21st Century. Surpac Minex Group: The Surpac Minex Group provide geological analysis services to the Australian mining community. Current geological models of interest are reaching the limit of 32-bit application space, and also execution times are becoming a limiting factor. Surpac Minex has a software development project underway to address these limitations, with development of a 64-bit address space version of their software. Surpac Minex, with assistance from TPAC, is investigating shared memory parallelism of aspects of their code, to gain knowledge, and identify appropriate algorithms, for future multi-core hardware platforms. 1.2.4 Relationships with APAC partners Our relationship to APAC partners is very important. The strategies described here for the third stage depend on the maturation of the APAC Grid. We have requirements for: information infrastructure to support the ESS data repositories, computational infrastructure to support the ESS analysis toolkits portlets to support some of the ESS portals for both cataloguing, knowledge discovery, and the analysis toolkits. 1.3 Role and Capabilities1.3.1 Earth Systems Science models.Capabilities: TPAC and its partners are at the forefront of the development of ocean, sea-ice and coupled models. TPAC, with its partners, has developed the AusCOM Ocean and Sea-Ice model for Australian researchers. This model forms the basis of the proposed ocean sea-ice component of the ACCESS Earth System Science model. TPAC’s direct contributions to AusCOM development are: The displaced pole model grid The entire development of the TPAC sea-ice model The adoption and modification of the OASIS coupler used to connect the model sub-components Inclusion of restart capabilities Boundary layer physics I/O management and synchronisation of model components Our experience with operating Earth Systems Model components are: CSIRO Cubic Conformal Atmosphere Model CSIRO ML3L low resolution model (used for paleo-climate runs) Modular Ocean Model from GDFDL (MOM3 and MOM4) Princeton Ocean Model (and OzPOM) Development of Ice-Sheet Models Role: TPAC’s role in the APAC National Facility program (including CT&T) will be the delivery of the AusCOM and ACCESS Earth System Models for use on the APAC National Facility by researchers within the ARCNESS community. The activities that support the TPAC mission are: Porting of Earth Systems Science models onto the APAC partner facilities Providing Academic users with support for the AusCOM and ACCESS models on APAC National and Partner Facilities. Support development of software frameworks ACCESS model and related tools. Support the storage and access by users of simulations using standards common in the ESS community. 1.3.2 Earth Systems Science Digital Repositories. Capabilities: Through its strategic relationships with international Earth Systems Science data Grid activities (e.g. AUKEGGS, NDG), TPAC brings a number of important capabilities to APAC. Expertise in OPeNDAP installation, and federation Digital repository portal, including data Discovery Visualisation Manipulation Processing Integrating Web Services with legacy ESS digital repositories Federating data holdings with international collaborators Providing important ESS datasets to users of the national Grid Integration of Globus-based middleware into ESS digital repositories Deployment of metadata and discovery services Wrapping datasets to facilitate homogenisation and data discovery Providing visualisation services GridSphere portal development Role: Focal point for universities involvement in ACCESS Provide the required data sets through our distributed earth systems science digital repository Support our partners in ACCESS and EES models Lead the Information Technology node of ARCNESS Provides OPeNDAP expertise and integrate Web Services for broader ARCNESS community Provide the AusCOM common simulation digital repository Facilitate other institutions contribution to this repository Host the Tasmanian Node of the BlueNet project Provide the most advanced university marine digital repository into the BlueNet project Collocation of BlueNet staff Data management and coordination for the APAC national data grid 2.0 Participation in the National Facility Program2.1 Key ClientsKey clientsKey Clients: ARC Network Earth Systems Science Staff (and post-graduate students) at University of Tasmania, ACE CRC, CSIRO and AAD TPAC will provide expertise and porting support to the ARCNESS research network for Earth Systems Science models, data sets and output for use on university and APAC partner facilities. Primarily, this support will focus on the AusCOM and ACCESS programs, but if a sufficient user-base is identified for additional Earth Systems Science codes relevant to the ARCNESS community, then TPAC will provide support in porting and grid enabling these additional codes. In addition to the activities to support ARCNESS, TPAC will also support the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Cooperative Research Centre (ACECRC) and the Quantitative Marine Science (QMS) program. In particular, TPAC provides the primary HPC infrastructure for these organizations, and is the initial point of contact for APAC Merit Allocation Scheme grants.
TPAC, through its partners will contribute $150,000 per annum to the APAC National Facility Program for year 2007 to 2009 inclusive, with this amount provisionally decreasing to $117,000 in 2010 and 2011. Detailed breakdown of this payment schedule is given below.
All amounts are in thousands of dollars. *ACECRC funding ceases in June 2010, so no ACE contribution is included for 2010 or 2011. However, if is ACE is successful in securing funding beyond 2010, a $33,000 contribution is likely to be available in 2010 and 2011. Conditions on resource shares: Dollar estimates are subject to partner agreement (current agreement runs until 31st December 2006) The resources share can be used for either data storage or for CPU cycles on the national facility by TPAC partners The resource share may be used to purchase cycles and storage for TPAC to maintain and or establish data repositories and compute services on the APAC compute and data grid. TPAC envisages that data storage requirements will expand rapidly over the term of TPAC3, and forecast ESS storage requirements in excess of 100 TB on the National Facility by 2011. Staff Resources
Table 1. Shows the contributed staff to the APAC National Facility program from the TPAC. Note the named staff could be substituted for alternative staff from each of the ogranisations with further consultations. The total EFT’s is 2.25 staff. 2.0 EFT’s to be funded from the APAC program and the other 2.0 EFT’s is the inkind contribution. Note that the staff contributions are concentrated in fewer people in this stage of TPAC 3. 3.0 Participation in the APAC Grid ProgramTPAC has created an developed a distributed environment for the Australian Earth Systems Science community based on common protocols and conventions used within this community. The successes during the 2004-2005 period are: Established OPeNDAP servers at 6 sites nationally (UTAS, CSIRO MAR, BMRC, CSIRO HPSC, APAC NF, AC3) – expanded holdings (IPCC, BMRC) (see Figure 3). Development of meta-data cataloguing and knowledge discovery portal (installed at several sites, JSR 168 compliant) During 2006 we expect to complete grid current projects for: Creation of server-side visualisation service – based on Live Access Server (including a portlet) Creation of server-side analysis/toolkit service – based on GrADS (including Portlet) Porting several ESS models to Grid – and creation of front-end portals The design of the above services are robust to changes in the underlying software. For example the front-end portals servicing the user or user applications can remain unchanged while the underlying technology such as OPeNDAP, or LAS, or GrADS servers can change and adapt to the new applications and be included into the developing globus-based APAC Grid. The three services that have been created during TPAC2 (knowledge discovery or searching, visualisation and analysis portals) will be linked into a common framework to provide greater integration of workflow. This will allow users to search for data sets of interest, visualise the results of those searches, and to apply standardised and frequently used analysis techniques/schemes to the data (Figure 3, right panel). We plan to participate in the APAC grid infrastructure program by: Providing in Tasmania, Grid Gateways, HPC compute facilities, data stores, networks (through TREN), some application software and systems administration Providing nationally the management of Earth Systems Science Portals for knowledge discovery, modeling and analysis of the Earth Systems Science data sets and associated services (eg OPeNDAP, Web Services) on the APAC Grid with an emphasis on model simulations. 3.1 Key ClientsKey Clients are the: ARC Network Earth Systems Science Staff and post-graduate students at University of Tasmania, ACE CRC, CSIRO, BMRC and AAD BlueNET participants ARC NESS represents the Australian Earth Systems Science community and expect that the information and compute grid will require: Larger and more widely distributed ESS data repositories (we project that this will grow to in excess of 100 terabytes) Visualisation and analysis tools for these ESS repositories Improvements in the security and authentication and methods for dealing with institutional firewalls (eg CSIRO, Bureau of Meteorology) over protocols currently used in this community (eg OPeNDAP). Development of distributed or virtual environments that allow both analysis (ie visualisation and analysis tools) and data resources for collaborative experiments and projects. The large data volumes generated by these models (AusCOM, ACCESS) require considerable additional computational analysis to reduce and extract those parameters of scientific interest. The results are published and may themselves be archived for discovery and further processing. Considerable effort is required to manage these data flows. TPAC has the expertise and resources to integrate these model ouputs into its existing digital repositories, to provide visualisation services, and importantly will be able to expand its computational analysis services to cater for the growing needs of the ESS research community. The requirements of ARCNESS, University of Tasmania, ACE CRC, CSIRO, and AAD have similiar requirments. We are building our relationship with BlueNET and BlueNET and TPAC staff are likely to be co-located on the University of Tasmania campus. The Director of TPAC is a member of the BlueNET steering Committee. TPAC will host the Tasmanian node of BlueNET network, and there is potential for other state nodes within APAC to host BlueNET nodes. TPAC facilities will also host large marine data sets that do not have institutional home within the BlueNET partners. See the attached letters of support from BlueNET and ARCNESS. Download 472.99 Kb. Share with your friends:
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