I support this.
The UK:-)
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Testbed Support for GridPP member institutes [mailto:TB-
> [log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Sam Skipsey
> Sent: 15 February 2011 10:29
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Submitted for your consideration: the NEISS.ORG.UK VO.
>
> Hello the UK,
>
> Jeremy informs me that in order to get a VO discussed for GridPP
> Approval, I should probably post some background stuff about it to the
> list to enable informed discussion.
>
> So, since the next meeting is a DTeam and Sites one, I thought it
> would be most reasonable to post this to the TB-SUPPORT list.
>
> The NeISS VO is the VO for the National e-Infrastructure for Social
> Simulation project, which is basically exactly what it says on the
> tin. They're a JISC funded project, succeeding earlier work by NCeSS.
> They're currently in a process of working out how their infrastructure
> would work, but they're rather interested in the model we have in WLCG
> of catalog hierarchies built on LFC/SRM layering. We support them at
> Glasgow, but we'd like them to get some use of the T1 LFC, which
> requires a bit of discussion.
>
> I attach several paragraphs of details about their aims and goals from
> one of their Project Manager, June Finch:
>
> In the longer term we are aiming for NeISS to support two types of
> GENESIS Social Simulation Models developed by Andy Turner. Both of
> these models focus on detailing the location and attributes of
> simulated people. One of them steps on the resolution of seconds and
> is like a transport or traffic simulation. The other steps on the
> resolution of days and is like a model of demographic change
> (incorporating birth, death and migration).
>
> The models are implemented in Java requiring Java 1.6, but not
> requiring any special installation. Several third party libraries are
> used. These and the GENESIS source code are open source. Andy is
> exploring the possibilities for parallelising the models using MPJ
> Express.
>
> We are currently focusing working on supporting a simple demographic
> change model. For this, an initial simulation run inputs some
> population, mortality and fertility statistics (less than 1MB in
> size). It then generates (in collections) entities representing
> individual people. On a daily time step this initial population is
> then simulated a pre-specified number of steps. The initialised
> population can be large and stored only partly in the fast access
> memory of the computer. Data swapping is managed internally in an
> attempt to minimise problems that can result from the throwing of
> OutOfMemoryErrors.
>
> At present Tom Doherty is developing user interface portlets and job
> staging code to run the simulation models at NeSC Glasgow. There are
> essentially three types of data we have identified:
> 1. Metadata that allow for a simulation result to be produced.
> 2. Result metadata that are passed back to the user and which can be
> analysed by the user to assess the simulation results
> 3. Simulated populations and checkpoint metadata
>
> Type 1 and 2 data are small especially in comparison with Type 3 data
> which for a city of 1 million people run over several generations
> could result in TerraBytes of Type 3 data. The Type 3 data is too big
> to be passed back to the portal and to the user and we want to store
> that somewhere near where the computation has been done. For this
> ScotGrid have offered us use of 2TB worth of data. We envisage that
> during NeISS simulations may run on different resources and that Type
> 3 data might be pulled by simulations run at NGS core sites. Given
> this, there is a need for an archive of simulation results and we have
> been advised that an LFC offers a appropriate solution for allowing us
> access. There are two main ways we are considering doing IO. One is
> from within the Java programs, the other is before and after a Java
> programs (to move the data from the LFC for local input, and to push
> the result to LFC as output). So rather than having one IO mechanism
> to use the 2TB of data now and another later when we have an archive
> (LFC), we are pushing for getting an LFC archive set up.
>
> We are hoping to run demographic change models for the UK, but
> estimates suggest that this would require over 2TB of data for a run
> of ten years which is what we require to compare between the UK
> Population Census outputs for consecutive censuses. The larger the
> number of time steps that are simulated, the larger the data storage
> requirements are. For this model, there are no call outs for data to
> be fetched in from the web.
>
> The transport or traffic simulation model is more complicated. In its
> current state it does try to pull data from web servers as it needs
> (e.g. Open Street Map data is pulled as it is needed). In theory, all
> the data for this model could be made available locally prior to
> running the model.
>
> At present there are no data confidentiality issues with the data we
> are using. It may be that down the line, we may use more restricted
> population data for the simulations.
>
> In terms of the NeISS project, the support for Andy's GENESIS Social
> Simulation Models is only one component, but it is an interesting and
> testing one for the e-Infrastructure that is evolving due to the
> potential computational demands of those models.
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