Lessons from SEEGrid/AuScope Grid Bruce Simons GeoScience Victoria

Why Grids? Sustainable management of mineral, energy, environmental resources Easy access to large volumes of geoscientific data Visualise in 2D, 3D, 4D environments Generic Grid technologies only provide part of the solution Also requires community specified open standards and interfaces

Just what is a ‘GRID’ GRIDs are persistent environments that enable software applications to integrate in real time instruments, displays, computational and information resources that are managed by diverse organizations in locations that are globally distributed The GRID is an infrastructure that will make access to computing power, scientific data repositories and experimental facilities as easy as the current web makes access to information The GRID is built on the existing Internet and World Wide Web Lesley Wyborn, Geoscience Australia, SEEGrid 1, 2003

ConnectivityPresentation Web pages Programmability Web services TCP/IP HTML XML/JAVA Historical Internet Usage Source:http// People Machine Browse the web Machine Program the web Evolution of the Web

SEEGrid Solid Earth and Environment Grid SEEGrid 1 July 2003 SEEGrid 2 March 2005 SEEGrid 3 November 2006 All the proceedings at: SEEGrid Roadshow 2005 –Showcasing Interoperability of Government Geoscience (Geochemistry) Data to the Australian Minerals Industry

Lessons from SEEGrid I, II, III I. Communities The way forward is to collaborate globally to get the content and technical standards stabilised II. Communities Right now we need the barriers between competition and collaboration to move forever in favour of collaboration III. Communities The competitive funding paradigm has meant that people do not know how to cooperate let alone be inclusive

AuScope National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy Australian Government ~$500M committed for FY06- FY11 15 “Capability Areas” identified + one ICT Infrastructure (AuScope Grid) The research communities in each capability area were asked to work with an appointed facilitator to develop a single Investment Plan NCRIS Principles –“Major infrastructure …should serve the research and innovation system broadly, not just the host / funded institutions” –“…….seek to enable the fuller participation of Australian researchers in the international research system”

AuScope – a system for earth science Toys TraumaThrillsTreasure

Toys: Earth Imaging Transects Program

Toys: GPS, Geodesy

Toys: Earth Composition & Evolution Geochemical Instruments

© CSIRO 2003 Toys: Virtual Core Library Spectrometer Telescope Robotic x/y table Linescan camera Control computer Cooler Profilometer ASD spectrometer Controlling computer Robotic x-y table Telescope Chip tray Quartz halogen lamps Fibre optic cable Chip tray carrier

Thrills: Simulation and modeling

Data Structures Proprietary Software Versions of Software Client Trauma: Data is not standardised

Community Standards Client A solution: Auscope Grid – access and interoperability for data services

Agreement can be achieved… GeoSciML international data transfer standard GeoSciML Team, Uppsala, Sweden, July 2008 Australia, USA, Japan, UK, France, Canada, Sweden, Italy

Creating your own models Interoperable communities have a community standard data model eg GeoSciML In a serialized form (file format) this is used for data transfer i.e. ‘standard exchange format’ –In general this is different from the storage format How big is your interoperable community? –Your work group? –Your organization? –Your discipline …? The bigger the community, the bigger the pool of resources for software development … …but the smaller degree of semantic overlap. Understand the scope and reach of your community Only maintain the elements that are: a.important to you b.not governed by someone else

Thankyou For more information: SEEGrid: AuScope: GeoSciML: OneGeology: CGI: