AN ORGANISATION FOR A NATIONAL EARTH SCIENCE INFRASTRUCTURE PROGRAM AuScope Grid: ready to take the data plunge Bob Haydon AuScope On behalf of many partners.

AN ORGANISATION FOR A NATIONAL EARTH SCIENCE INFRASTRUCTURE PROGRAM

AuScope Grid: ready to take the data plunge

Bob Haydon

AuScopeOn behalf of many partners

What is the AuScope Grid?

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• AuScope Grid = Open standards based web services infrastructure

• 4 year project to build the IT infrastructure – a suite of IT tools for spatial data

interoperability– Core ingredient is an information

exchange layer that allows “Clients” to connect to “Resources” such as an organisations data

• Forms a key component of the AuScope Infrastructure System

Simple Message

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• A large group of research collaborators have worked on the Grid challenge for a decade

• Aimed at rectifying the national issue of information access, interoperability and cross-organisational collaboration

• A solution has been developed and Australia is well positioned to lead from here

• A long road ahead but we have some real and relevant examples of the infrastructure adding value to government organisations

• The value will be ever so much greater with involvement by industry end users who rely on the data and information

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AuScope and the Grid partnership

• Improving our science base through research is heavily dependent on science infrastructure– Physical Equipment

– Data

– Software

– IT Infrastructure

• Much of this is relies on collaboration– AuScope Research Partners

– State and Commonwealth Government CGGC and CSIRO

– AuScope Grid Project lead by CSIRO

We rely on data for decision making

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?

Commonwealth

State

Local

Regional

Industry

Research

bedrock

surficial

mineral

geochemical

geochronologic

hyrdrogeological

Geo-information

geophysical

Decision makers

Data

.... there has been a national issue of information access, interoperability and cross-organisational collaboration.... there has been a national issue of information access, interoperability and cross-organisational collaboration

The Grid Challenge over the past decade

To rectify the national issue of information access, interoperability and cross-organisational collaboration– Develop a suite of IT tools that permits users across government

agencies and research organisations to access spatial data in public archives

– Build upon existing open source Information Technologies where possible

– Provide web-based tools to discover what data and information exists and to access it, use it and if necessary down load it

– Develop a system sufficiently robust to deploy to a range of national organisations in a way that encourages other end users to utilise the services

• An Ambitious Objective

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Collaborators

Federal Government Agencies and Major Initiatives

Federal Government Agencies and Major Initiatives

UniversitiesANU/RSESMacquarie UniversityUWAAdelaide UniversityCurtin UniversityMelbourne UniversityMonash UniversitySydney UniversityUniversity of TasmaniaUniversity of Queensland

UniversitiesANU/RSESMacquarie UniversityUWAAdelaide UniversityCurtin UniversityMelbourne UniversityMonash UniversitySydney UniversityUniversity of TasmaniaUniversity of Queensland

State Government Agencies for Land ManagementQld NRMNSW Dept LandsTas DPIWWA Landgate

Other State Government Agencies participate through:Geoscience Australia

State Government Agencies for Land ManagementQld NRMNSW Dept LandsTas DPIWWA Landgate

Other State Government Agencies participate through:Geoscience Australia

Geological Surveys through CGGC and Government Geoscience

Information Committee

Geological Surveys through CGGC and Government Geoscience

Information Committee

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Collaboration Required Persistence and Endurance

• Large number of diverse organisations

• Massive amounts of historical data and information

• New IT infrastructure was needed capable of providing new data streams

• Users with multitude of workflows

• Large range of software applications

• Different Organisational IT Infrastructure

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The infrastructure conceived a decade ago is changing...

• Increasing need for:– richer content– diverse content from

multiple sources• How do I connect....

my tools to

your content?• AuScope’s

Infrastructure vision was an exemplar to help people do this a bit easier

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AuScope Infrastructure System for National Data and Integration

Physical equipment and datasets

Grid computing infrastructure to access data

Software for analysis and modelling

National spatial framework

Models and concepts for the Australian Continent

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a combination of research infrastructure and applied science infrastructure

a combination of research infrastructure and applied science infrastructure

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The familiar data interfaces ≠ Vision

Provider defined clients and formats

Dat

a P

rovi

ders

Tas

ACT

Vic

NT

Users

The real story was reflected in hard facts

• Up to 80% of project time is spent compiling and manipulating existing data (example from GSV)– 20% of project time available for real work

• Effective data integration remained elusive– Information access and exchange issues plagued the minerals industry

and Government (as reported in the Minerals Exploration Action Agenda) and significantly impacted many minerals related research objectives which often require nationally integrated datasets.

• Cost of data integration is itself a barrier to the research required to justify the investment in data integration

• True for geology but pervades the entire resource value chain

...There was a driver to change and ...

... an opportunity through the AuScope investment

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Underpinned by Australia’s Global leadership in pre-competitive geoscience

data

Underpinned by Australia’s Global leadership in pre-competitive geoscience

data

Two projects addressing national data infrastructure and integration

• AuScope Grid: Spatial Information Services Stack– National data sharing infrastructure

• AuScope National Virtual Core Library– Hyperspectral mineral mapping

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AuScope Community Agreements

A solution: Open standards based earth science information infrastructure

Client

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Australia is well positioned to lead…

• Strong industry• State and Territory Surveys and GA

– Precompetitive data and knowledge– Exploration initiatives– Strong and active Chief Government Geologists Committee

• World class research capability– Track record– DET CRC; CET; Universities

• Supportive Ministerial Council for Minerals and Petroleum Resources

• Issues recognised and reported in the Minerals Exploration Action Agenda

A national competitive advantageA national competitive advantage15

Some excellent progress has been made on a long road

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• NVCL – hyperspectral data from core • Earth Resources – mineral occurrence data• CSIRO MDU Earth model

• Historical Reports• Yilgarn Geochemistry

• National Geophysics - grav/mag/rads grids and data• WA CoE 3D Mineral Mapping• BOM Weather station data• Coastal Biophysical Modeller

Examples CSIRO MDU and BOM

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Discovery Portal – combine and visualise data in different formats from different hosts

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AuScope National Virtual Core Library

http://nvcl.csiro.au

http://portal.auscope.org/gmap.html

Unlocking National Resource Value will involve ongoing collaboration : resembles a national JV

National surveys / GA

Explorers Innovation & education

UnlockingNational

ResourceValue

A national ‘JV’

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The future

• An Australian Geoscience portal– More earth resources-related datasets

– Broader contribution of data supported by industry users

• An e-Research infrastructure to provide– data management and assimilation tools to integrate, synthesise and

access information and knowledge from these large and distributed data stores

– infrastructure to meet future demand by enhancing multi-dimensional 3/4D data access via the web portals

– a framework that will allow online access to larger volume data sets and enable processing at their highest resolution with improved model fidelity.

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Conclusions

• Federated Spatial Information Services data infrastructure is now a reality

• The community has an opportunity to embrace these developments

• We have only scratched the surface

• Not just added another dataset or portal to the science community, but provided a new way of doing science, a true infrastructure development

• We can now transform the way that data and data products are identified, shared, integrated, and reused, to unlock the benefits of true integration of research efforts across the minerals value chain

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AN ORGANISATION FOR A NATIONAL EARTH SCIENCE INFRASTRUCTURE PROGRAM