Submitted by:
Joshua Blake Polterock
Technical Editor
User Services
San Diego Supercomputer Center
PO Box 85608
San Diego, CA 92186-9784 USA
v: (619) 534-5047
f: (619) 534-5117
e: joshuap@sdsc.edu
Categories:
Research, academic; Research, government; Research, commercial
Keywords:
Innovative or improved ways of doing things; More equitable access to technology or electronic information; Creation of new ideas, products, or services; Technology transfer; Local commitment to network-based activities; Leverage of public funding; Volunteer contributions of time and energy; Partnerships between public and private sector
Supporting Documentation (contact author for more information):
Software; Documentation; Slides/photographs; Computer graphic images, such as GIF files
The Story:
Network Interchange Stimulates Research in Global Change Many make use of the Internet network, but few place a requirement on its bandwidth and protocols as Project Sequoia 2000. This project , Digital Equipment Corporation’s “flagship Project of the l990s” and a major grant to the University of California, makes extensive use of the Internet network by linking to scientists located throughout California and other locations in the U.S. In fact, its demands go beyond the ability of the NSFNET to satisfy them, requiring the researchers to set up a dedicated network for some facets of the project.
In recent years, satellite imagery has provided a brand new perspective of our planet. The opportunity to see the planet Earth from the viewpoint of a satellite encourages us to consider the planet as a single system of interrelated parts. This recent wholistic perspective, presented to millions through magazine covers and weather reports, has created an increasing awareness about the effects of global environmental change and the direct relationship between these effects and the behaviors of human beings. This increasing global awareness has brought scientists from previously independent disciplines together to collaborate on global change research; Project Sequoia 2000 teams Earth scientists from the fields of meteorology, oceanography, bioclimatology, ecology, geochemistry, geomorphology, and hydrology with scientists in the fields of computer and information science.
This unprecedented collaboration provides knowledge to develop the technological infrastructure to enhance the progress of global climate research. This infrastructure will provide tools to store, transfer, visualize, and manipulate the ever-increasing volumes of data generated by global change research all in real-time over vast distances. These new tools and collaborative efforts help scientists address critical issues such as the “greenhouse effect,” ozone depletion, water pollution, deforestation, atmospheric toxification, decreasing water supplies, and the decline in the health of vegetation. Additionally, through cooperative agreements with commercial partners, the new tools will benefit other research disciplines as technology transfer occurs.
Project Sequoia encompasses five main areas of development, creating new inroads in global change research and information systems science: I) Tools for distributed networking – The scientists must have network- intelligent software tools that facilitate collaboration and provide timely access to huge libraries of data regardless of the data’s location; 2) Data storage – The storage technologies’ must allow scientists to store up to petabyte (1 x 1015) amounts of information; 3) Data management – The system must have the capability to handle Diverse data types including vector data from topographic maps and raster data from satellite images; 4) Graphical user interface – The interface must allow scientists to interact easily with their visualizations using symbols and terminology from their varying fields of study; 5) Visualization – Scientists must have access to visualization software, running on local workstations, flexible and powerful enough to create time-lapse animations of the data sets.
The San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) acts as the headquarters for the visualization focus of Project Sequoia 2000. At SDSC, computer scientists and visualization experts are developing interactive software for graphics workstations that allows researchers to view the image data resulting from their calculations. The goal of this development is to provide a working environment that makes the network and the remote location of the data transparent to the researcher. Researchers working remotely may query a centralized database, requesting data to be sent over the network to their local workstation where they can visualize it. A single request for data from the database, which the researcher may want to display as an animation requiring many frames, can exceed a Gigabyte of information. The excessive size of these data sets has motivated the researchers to establish their own dedicated T3 (45 Megabits per second) network, the SequoiaNet.
Eventually, the new protocols and the graphical user interface being developed will allow researchers to view and manipulate their data in real time. In addition, these tools will have application to network development in general and other scientific disciplines.
Network Interchange Stimulates Research in Global Change Many research projects make use of the Internet network, but few place as enormous a requirement on its bandwidth and protocols as Project Sequoia 2000. This project , Digital Equipment Corporation’s “Flagship Project of the 1990s” and a major grant to the University of California, makes extensive use of the Internet network by linking to scientists located throughout California and other locations in the U.S. In fact, its demands go beyond the ability of the NSFNET to satisfy them, requiring the researchers to set up a dedicated network for some facets of the project.
In recent years, satellite imagery has provided a brand new perspective of our planet. The opportunity to see the planet Earth from the viewpoint of a satellite encourages us to consider the planet as a single system of interrelated parts. This recent wholistic perspective, presented to millions through magazine covers and weather reports, has created an increasing awareness about the effects of global environmental change and the direct relationship between these effects and the behaviors of human beings. This increasing global awareness has brought scientists from previously independent disciplines together to collaborate on global change research; Project Sequoia 2000 teams Earth scientists from the fields of meteorology, oceanography, bioclimatology, ecology, geochemistry, geomorphology, and hydrology with scientists in the fields of computer and information science.
This unprecedented collaboration provides knowledge to develop the technological infrastructure to enhance the progress of global climate research. This infrastructure will provide tools to store, transfer, visualize, and manipulate the ever-increasing volumes of data generated by global change research all in real-time over vast distances. These new tools and collaborative efforts help scientists address critical issues such as the “greenhouse effect,” ozone depletion, water pollution, deforestation, atmospheric toxification, decreasing water supplies, and the decline in the health of vegetation. Additionally, through cooperative agreements with commercial partners, the new tools will benefit other research disciplines as technology transfer occurs.
Project Sequoia encompasses five main areas of development, creating new inroads in global change research and information systems science:
- Tools for distributed networking – The scientists must have network- intelligent software tools that facilitate collaboration and provide timely access to huge libraries of data regardless of the data’s location;
- Data storage – The storage technologies must allow scientists to store up to petabyte (1 x 1015) amounts of information;
- Data management – The system must have the capability to handle diverse data types including vector data from topographic maps and raster data from satellite images;
- Graphical user interface – The interface must allow scientists to interact easily with their visualizations using symbols and terminology from their varying fields of study;
- Visualization – Scientists must have access to visualization software, running on local workstations, flexible and powerful enough to create time-lapse animations of the data sets.
The San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) acts as the headquarters for the visualization focus of Project Sequoia 2000. At SDSC, computer scientists and visualization experts are developing interactive software for graphics workstations that allows researchers to view the image data resulting from their calculations. The goal of this development is to provide a working environment that makes the network and the remote location of the data transparent to the researcher. Researchers working remotely may query a centralized database, requesting data to be sent over the network to their local workstation where they can visualize it. A single request for data from the database, which the researcher may want to display as an animation requiring many frames, can exceed a Gigabyte of information. The excessive size of these data sets has motivated the researchers to establish their own dedicated T3 (45 Megabits per second) network, the SequoiaNet.
Eventually, the new protocols and the graphical user interface being developed will allow researchers to view and manipulate their data in real time. In addition, these tools will have application to network development in general and other scientific disciplines.