Grid-BGC

This image shows how a typical Grid-BGC workflow is mapped onto the SOA and how expected workflows from future science portals would map onto the SOA. The design objective of the SOA is to provide a set of services that allow researchers to Grid enabling Earth science applications. The Grid-BGC science portal and geoscience SOA allow scientists to interactively set up simulations used to model the global carbon cycle.

Grid computing is an essential component of NCAR's cyberinfrastructure strategy and addresses the general concern in the computational science community that the integration of computing infrastructure needs to encompass more than considerations about hardware configurations. These concerns arise from the observation that scientific workflows are becoming too complicated for manual (or semi-manual) implementation in a rapidly evolving computing and information environment. To address this, many in the community have chosen to expand the notion of infrastructure beyond facilities and hardware to encompass software development and integration, with the ultimate goal of providing a set of seamless services to researchers that encompass all of the components—both physical and virtual—required to produce an end-to-end solution.

The Grid-BGC project is one effort being used to scope out the set of services required by the geoscience research community. This is a collaborative project that employs Globus Grid technology to develop an end-to-end solution that seamlessly couples models, data, and resources to allow geoscientists to simulate terrestrial biogeochemistry over large domains at high spatial resolution. Grid-BGC is built on the Globus Toolkit and allows scientists to easily configure and run high-resolution terrestrial carbon cycle simulations without having to worry about the individual components of the simulation or the underlying computational and data storage systems, which are often distributed. Core development components of this system include re-coding several earth science models so they can operate in an automated software environment, developing a science portal, and designing and implementing a service oriented architecture (SOA) for the geosciences.

The Grid-BGC project will conclude in October 2006 with the release of a production-grade version of the Grid-BCG science portal to the biogeochemistry community along with user and system documentation. One added result of this project is a prototype SOA for the geosciences and ESP, a toolkit for rapid service development. These services form the back end to the Grid-BGC science portal that allows scientists to interactively set up simulations used to model the global carbon cycle. The SOA for Grid-BGC is comprised of User Interface Services (Portal, GUI, and Command Line Client), Data Services (Mass Storage Service, File Transfer Service, and Data Publishing Service), Execution Services (Model Execution Service, Workflow Control Service, and Resource Allocation Service), and Metadata Services (Resource Brokerage Service). Moreover, data services that are currently bundled with the science portal can be developed into a standalone set of services in the SOA using ESP. Experiments with POP, CAM, and WRF have shown that this prototype SOA can indeed integrate these applications into a grid environment. Grid-BGC is the first working computational grid for carbon cycle simulations, and the SOA designed to support it provides a seamless set of services from which the geoscience community can potentially build other end-to-end solutions.

Here is the Grid-BGC website.

This effort supports NCAR's strategic priorities of "Developing and providing advanced services and tools" and "Creating an Earth system knowledge environment." NASA has provided funding for the Grid-BGC project through the Advanced Information Systems Technology Office (NASA AIST Grant NAG2-1646) and the Terrestrial Ecology Program.