Poster by: Stephen Giugni, CSIRO – Tasmanian ICT Centre.

Access to data which describes our world is increasing at an astounding rate. In order to allow us to make decisions in increasingly complex environments which require evaluations of many competing needs we have turned to increasingly more complex simulation and modelling tools. As our ability to sense our world on finer spatial and temporal scales we are enabling a renaissance in experimental evaluation of the world which is being coupled with the sophisticated eResearch capabilities to assist in providing increased opportunities to validate and drive our models. At the same time, we are exploring the need to seek more extensive interrelations between models across a range of disciplines to more accurately explore scenarios for the future.

This paper will explore 3 application areas we are developing in monitoring and prediction of water resources, optimisation of marine environments for sustainable use and energy use from a national perspective.

The issue of water resource management is of key concern to the Australian Government and to all individuals. Many sophisticated models exist for regions of Australia which are validated against various measurements such as water flow, rainfall and storage capacity. To fully model the interaction between all of our catchments involves the interaction with a number of water use scenarios at a fine scale and ocean and climate models at a global level. Increasingly, it has been recognised that a greater range of sensors at higher spatial and temporal measurements are required to validate and drive these complex models. This sensor web offers the potential to create an environment which is available to be composed to support the search for answers to new questions as greater knowledge is learned about the overall system or to facilitate the researchers to ask questions at a range of levels across a range of disciplines, whether that is in hydrology, agriculture or water supply.

Building on this work, we are developing tools to integrate improved sensing with models of our marine environments. Our waterways are increasingly asked to support a range of competitive uses including recreational, environmental, industrial and aquaculture. We are supporting the development of biogeochemical and hydrodynamic models of these environments with a range of sensing systems to drive these models and improve our ability to make assessments regarding the impact on a range of groups. The search for greater reliability and multi-modal optimisation requires the inclusion of a broader range of models than have been considered in the past and extends to terrestrial water use models as well as ocean and climate models.

The development of these open composable research environments which include a range of configurable data and model sources will broaden the opportunity for researchers to engage in collaborative searchers for solutions and new research questions.

A final case we are developing is in the area of multi-modal optimisation for the energy sector. Sophisticated models have been developed which allow the evaluation of the interactions between various stakeholders. To allow for the increasingly complex interactions between producers and consumers and the impact of short and long-term events greater sensing of the actual state of the national grid will be required.

The increasingly complexity and interrelatedness of all of our systems leads to an excellent opportunity for eResearch as a platform for increased interaction between disciplines and for the development of the next generation of tools and systems to assist in the decisions which will drive our future.