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Abstract

On the 27 November 2006 the Minister for the Department of Education, Science and Technology announced that under the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS) $42.8 million would go to Australian Earth Sciences to help build an integrated national infrastructure system called AuScope.

A key element of AuScope is the AuScope Grid, which comprises an Earth Science Data Grid and a Compute Grid. Combined both provide a distributed computational e-Research infrastructure that will enable the construction of a dynamic updateable 4D Australian Earth Model.

The goal of the AuScope Compute Grid is to facilitate quantitative geoscience analysis by providing an infrastructure and tools for advanced data mining, simulation and computational modelling.

The AuScope Earth Science Data Grid is a proposed national geoscience data network, which aims to use international standards to allow real time access to data, information and knowledge stored in distributed repositories from academia, industry and government. The Data grid will be also built on ‘end-to-end’ Science principles (aka open access principles) whereby there will be access to the highly processed information and knowledge, as well as the original raw data and the processing programs used to generate the results.

About the speakers

Lesley Wyborn is currently Group Leader, Interoperability in Geoscience Australia. In 2003, with Robert Woodcock, Simon Cox and Joan Esterle of CSIRO she established the Solid Earth and Environmental Grid (SEE Grid). SEE Grid aims to bring together people in the earth, environmental and computing sciences to address the issues of transparent access to data and knowledge about the earth. Lesley was also part of the team which developed the AuScope ‘e-Research’ Strategy.

Robert Woodcock is Executive Manager, e-Science CSIRO Information Management & Technology and Principal Software Engineer for CSIRO Exploration and Mining. He is responsible for technology development in the Computational Geoscience for Predictive Discovery theme, and coordinates the divisions activities in the Solid Earth and Environment Grid. His current focus is on the development of a software framework to support modelling and simulation of geoscience problems using Grid and Web service technologies. Rob's interests include R&D project management, software engineering, distributed computation and information systems, and computer graphics.

Rob completed his PhD on, Physically based modelling for surgical simulation at UWA In 1992. He was the Chief Technical Officer for Super Software International and previously the Manager of Research and Development at Fractal Technologies (formerly Fractal Graphics). He also lectured in Electrical and Electronics Engineering at the University of Western Australia.