Speaker
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
Like other sciences ES needs to deal with enormous amounts of data and large
computational needs. But what makes ES different? ES deals with geospatial data in
combination with time components (4D) in various scales and resolutions, consists of
many different domains, scattered among all countries in numerous institutes, using
complex applications. For ES e-science can be an essential improvement in research,
operation and business, especially when Grid services can be coupled to existing ES
services. But is e-science mature and does it cover all ES requirements? DEGREE aims
at answering these questions by capturing ES requirements and analyzing Grid
solutions. To capture evolving ES requirements for Grid services, over 20 application
scenarios were collected and grouped into families of applications. This will ease
communication, maintenance and tracing of requirements More ES applications scenarios
will be added; updating and analyzing requirement progress will be a continuous effort
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.
Three families have been identified, following a scheme with three different levels
of complexity. In this case complexity is referring to the complexity of requirements
placed on Grid technology by the application, not of the application itself. The
first family is called the simple applications, the second the complex applications
and the third family is the complex workflow applications. In short specific ES Grid
requirements are: Reliability (QoS); real-time and instantaneous access; The need to
access licensed software; Data policies on input and output data i.e. complicated
security requirements; data is scattered around various institutes in various
formats, in various databases and has metadata attached to it in various forms, i.e.
data management (accessibility, harmonization) is essential in ES. Workflow
orchestration is vital to cover requirements from the third family of applications.
Key services for ES are workflow management and data and metadata management.
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 current maturity of GRID systems implies that (potential) users are troubled with
in-depth knowledge to perform basic actions as a hindrance for wide utilization in
the ES community. In order to make e-science take the next step in ES, there is a
need for standardization on Grid service level so existing and for coupling easily
new web services to the Grid. Portals improving the accessibility to data, computing
and results will greatly improve ES research and Grid infrastructure usage.
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).
Earth Science (ES) is an all-embracing term for sciences related to the planet Earth,
covering a large and diverse user community. The major disciplines use physics,
geology, mathematics, chemistry, and biology to build a quantitative understanding of
the principal areas or spheres of the Earth system. Examples of thematic areas are:
atmospheric sciences, hydrology, and geophysics. The DEGREE project is a consortium
of ES and computer science partners aiming at promoting the uptake of Grid in ES
