Speaker
With a forward look to future evolution, discuss the issues you have encountered (or that you expect) in using the EGEE infrastructure. Wherever possible, point out the experience limitations (both in terms of existing services or missing functionality)
The fast access and processing of the images is the key point for
the
UNOSAT project. It requires to build the support for a reliable
storage and workload
management system in the EGEE production is system to be ready in
case of peak activity.
Report on the experience (or the proposed activity). It would be very important to mention key services which are essential for the success of your activity on the EGEE infrastructure.
During the project development we have enabled the selection and
download
of satellite images starting on a portable device (using the GPS
coordinates
provided by the devide itself). The system provides seamless
access to valuable
satellite images while preserving the security requirements of
the data provider
and of the EGEE infrastructure (using X509 certificates). The
system uses EGEE
services already used by other applications and in this
presentation we show
how we have orchestrated them. The satellite images are
catalogued by the
AMGA (metadata) and LFC (location) services. The handling of images
(compression/decompression, cropping, etc) is provided by the
computational
GRID resources via the EGEE workload management system. This work
is being
performed in close collaboration with the NICE Company, providing
their
EnginFrame technology (used also by Genius EGEE portal, for a
development
and deployment environment for portal applications)
Describe the scientific/technical community and the scientific/technical activity using (planning to use) the EGEE infrastructure. A high-level description is needed (neither a detailed specialist report nor a list of references).
UNOSAT is a United Nations activity to provide access to
satellite images and
geographic system services for humanitarian operations for rescue
or aid
activities. UNOSAT is implemented by the UN Institute for
Training and Research
(UNITAR) and managed by the UN Office for Project Services
(UNOPS). In
addition, partners from different organizations constitute the
UNOSAT
consortium. Among these partners, CERN participates actively
providing the
required computational and storage resources.
Describe the added value of the Grid for the scientific/technical activity you (plan to) do on the Grid. This should include the scale of the activity and of the potential user community and the relevance for other scientific or business applications
The bottleneck of the UNOSAT activity is the storage and
processing of large
quantities of images that their members need to manage. The fast
and secure
access to these images from any part of the world is mandatory
during these
activities. Based on two successful CERN-GRID/UNOSAT pilot
projects (data
storage/compression/download and image access through mobile
phone), the
GRID-UNOSAT project has consolidated the considerable work
undertaken so
far in the present activity. The use case we have demonstrated is
the delivery of
satellite images from the GRID to a portal (web and portable
devices). This use
case, applied for the moment to UNOSAT, can also be used by many
communities requiring a fast and reliable access to geographical
images from
any portable device.
