INDUSTRY

By Katherine A. Caponi, NCSA Research Writer -- Grid computing provides the backbone for a distributed virtual laboratory for experimentation and simulation in earthquake engineering ------ In just two short years, the power of grid computing will dramatically alter the way forward-thinking earthquake engineers go about their daily work. The researcher who once lacked access to expensive equipment will use a desktop server to participate in reaction wall experiments taking place halfway across the country. The tsunami specialist previously hampered by data incompatibility will compare results with output from completed numerical simulations. Through a grid environment that brings them together and puts applications, scientific instruments, and data at their fingertips, engineers and researchers will work more effectively toward the central goal of earthquake engineering: reducing the loss of life and property from seismic activity. NCSA, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the University of Michigan, the University of Southern California, Argonne National Laboratory, and the University of Oklahoma are leading the effort to deploy the integrated network that will connect these engineers and researchers. Called NEESgrid, the systems integrations effort connects a growing list of geographically distributed members of the NSF-funded George E. Brown, Jr., Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation (NEES), a distributed virtual laboratory for earthquake experimentation and simulation. NEESgrid will provide the backbone for the NEES collaborative environment. This Internet-based infrastructure will supply a variety of services and applications. NEESgrid will deliver to researchers across the nation a network of shared equipment sites housing shake tables, centrifuge test facilities, reaction walls, and tsunami wave tanks. The network will also provide a curated data repository of physical and numerical earthquake simulations, maintained at NCSA, and provide access to numerical simulation resources. Distributed servers developed at Argonne, called NEES points of presence (NEESpop's) located at equipment sites will coordinate grid resources and data flow between users and the grid. "The NEESgrid will revolutionize the way earthquake engineers approach the solution of complex problems," explains Dan Reed, director of NCSA and the Alliance. "Researchers at one site will be able to access and manipulate experimental facilities at another site, combine the measurements with models, and collaborate with yet a third site. By allowing virtual teams to collaborate across time and space, and by integrating multidisciplinary computational models, distributed measurement and test facilities, and real-time data streams, NEESgrid will enable attacks on problems beyond the scope and resources of any one research group. Indeed, precisely such capabilities are needed to respond to both natural disasters and threats to homeland security." Uniting researchers and resources NEESgrid provides a coordinated collection of tools for uniting the very diverse and dynamic field of earthquake engineering. Four main components contribute to the systems integration effort that will establish NEES as the future of earthquake engineering. Telepresence Telepresence allows researchers to observe, participate in, or conduct experiments remotely. One type of telepresence, teleobservation, allows engineers and researchers to passively view multiple data and video streams during real-time tests conducted at NEES equipment sites. A second type of telepresence, teleoperations, allows researchers to actively interact with equipment and run experiments at remote sites. NEESgrid builds on techniques pioneered by participant Nestor Zaluzec at Argonne to integrate advanced telepresence technologies into NEESgrid. Online collaboration NEESgrid will provide a real-time collaborative environment for information sharing through an adaptation of the CompreHensive collaborativE Framework (CHEF) being developed at the University of Michigan. Through CHEF, NEES users will also be able to schedule multi-site videoconferencing sessions, access email archives and electronic laboratory notebooks, and talk to other researchers through text chat and message boards. The grid will encourage a closely-knit community through real-time interactions. By providing more people with access to shared equipment and giving them a virtual environment for online collaboration, NEESgrid will enable engineers to help each other solve problems from unique perspectives. Data repository and metadata catalogue NCSA will host and curate a data repository containing information about both physical testing studies and numerical simulations conducted as part of the NEES program. The first of its kind, the NEESgrid data repository will enable engineers to access organized archives of data that are currently unavailable. For the first time, earthquake engineers will have a unified, standardized means for accessing both the results and the raw data of other researchers. The NEESgrid team, in collaboration with the engineering community, is also developing a set of metadata standards specifically for earthquake engineering. The metadata standards will provide complete information about the location where the experiment took place, the purpose behind it, what instruments were used, and much more. Because the metadata standards are the product of detailed interactions with the community, the resulting data and metadata archives will significantly increase the amount of useful information available and decrease the time it takes to access it. Simulation effort NEESgrid team members, led by the University of Oklahoma are engaged in an effort to further enhance the network through a code repository. The repository will have three main uses. The first is a collection of numerical applications that will serve as documented examples of the methods NEES researchers have used to solve problems in the past. Another section of the repository will contain an archive of code results against which engineers can compare their own codes for validation. The third part of the simulation effort will coordinate and implement modifications and improvements suggested by the community to NEESgrid software tools. NEESgrid will provide community members with secure access to the repository through grid technology. The catalogued and tested software will improve accessibility and use of the tools by the broader community of earthquake engineers. Because a tsunami specialist may use different software tools than a shake table specialist—or even different tools than another tsunami specialist—it is important that the NEESgrid include all of the latest earthquake engineering technology. Through the simulation effort, NEESgrid team members will constantly gather tools information, providing the necessary compatibility to support that cutting-edge technology. Movers and shakers NEESgrid will provide a specific process for making the Grid useful for a constantly evolving field like earthquake engineering. Led by the University of Michigan School of Information, team members will assess and reassess the needs of the community through ongoing interaction with NEESgrid users. For Tom Finholt, the User Requirements Assessment team leader from the University of Michigan, NEESgrid is all about delivering a network that engineers will actually use. "Successful adoption and use of NEESgrid by the earthquake engineering community depends on the key information provided by the School of Information team," says Finholt. "We bring over a decade's experience in identifying and evaluating user requirements from other collaboratory projects to the NEESgrid project. Our contribution will ensure that user needs shape both the initial deployment of NEESgrid and its ongoing evolution." The continuous drive to fulfill community needs will create a valuable working model for other fields of research. Ian Foster of Argonne, who shares the System Architecture team leadership with Carl Kesselman of the University of Southern California's Information Sciences Institute, works to solve problems that will make the Grid applicable for real-world users. "Our work is concerned above all with putting the Grid in NEESgrid: that is, with turning a distributed collection of NEES facilities, data repositories, and computers into an integrated system usable by earthquake engineers anywhere," says Foster. "This task involves hard problems in security, resource management, data management, telepresence, collaboration, and networking. So far we're making excellent progress, building on technologies such as the Globus Toolkit to address these problems." Improving on existing applications to solve system usability problems, NEESgrid team members are making the Grid an easily accessible research tool for people outside the world of information technology. "NEESgrid represents NSF's first investment in a really large engineering application making use of a grid-enabled IT infrastructure," says Tom Prudhomme, director of NCSA's CyberCommunities Division and the PI of NEESgrid. "Beside the direct advantage to the earthquake engineering community, NEESgrid will validate building frameworks like the Grid. It will provide the concept-to-reality demonstration we need to show that the resources and computing power of the Grid can be used by real people to solve real-world problems."