Modeling the past climate to improve the future

Recognizing that to predict the future, nothing better than revisiting the past, Phillipe Navaux presented at the CHAIN-​​GISELA Conference the idea of ​​a data repository with the climate activity of the last ten years in Brazil, Argentina, Peru and Uruguay. The idea is supported in the draft GBRAMS AMSUD project seeking to create tools for large-scale weather computing in this part of the region.

The LAGClima application and the creation of a computational Grid are the objectives of this collaboration generated between universities of the involved countries, together with France. The project uses the BRAMS application, an open software developed in Brazil to model weather conditions, inspired in RAMS (Regional Atmospheric Modeling), created in Colorado, USA. "We must build capacity to use local tools and methodologies," said Navaux.

The initiative would record a series of important data for studies of hydrology, weather predictions, predict natural disasters and other activities favorable to agriculture and urban development in the midst of a potential international network of specialists in this field.

The involved countries have already created the Grid for these purposes. Navaux said to be open to integrate efforts with the GISELA Project and the new Science Gateway environment for access to data derived from this project as well as other possibilities for working together. "We have common objectives."

Began the discussion about the future of advanced computing services in LA

Latin America was central yesterday to the discussion of advanced computing services for science and education. In the first day of the GISELA-CHAIN Conference, being held in Mexico, the Deputy Director of Planning and International Cooperation of CONACYT Mexico warned that the region should "wake up" to the subject of e-Science and move faster to respond institutionally to this new way of generating Knowledge.

The afternoon began with the future of advanced computing services in Latin America. Discussions will continue today. It is expected that at the end of the Conference,  a memorandum of understanding between the major academic networks in the region, including RedCLARA, will be signed, to generate an atmosphere of cooperation in this matter.

Follow us live at: http://www.webcast.unam.mx/index.php?view=details&id=2100:gisela-chain-conference

2011 Itaracuça F2F GISELA Meeting: Thinking e-Science and Grid Computing Collaboration in America Latina

Among 3 days, GISELA  (Grid Initiatives for e-Science virtual communities in Europe and Latin America) members were joined in Itaracuça, Brazil to think the new actions face to Latin America community needs and perspectives. The board of 15 representatives and managers of different GISELA work package and CLARA  (Latin America Cooperation of Advanced Networks) transition teams, coordinated by Bernard Marechal, was discussed about actions and strategies to develop and evolve Grid computing infrastructure and support the research communities in accordance with specific and general needs. 

The action plan proposed for the board, implies different activities and strategies to ensure good dissemination of Grid Computing possibilities, custom user (and communities) support and the develop of infrastructure and oriented-services portfolio to scientists and academic communities.

In the picture (Standing right to left): Ramon Diacovo (WP4-NGI/LGI Infrastructure Services Manager, UFRJ Brazil), Bernard Maréchal (Project Coordinator, CETA-CIEMAT /UFRJ, Spain, Brazil), Phillipe Gavilet (Deputy Project Coordinator, CETA-CIEMAT/CERN, Spain, Switzerland), Herbert Hoeger (WP2-Dissemination and Outreach Manager, ULA, Venezuela), Diego Carvalho (WP3-User Communities Support Manager, CEFET-RJ, Brazil), Jesus Cruz Guzman (WP4-CLARA Transition Team, UNAM, Mexico), Luis Trejo Rodriguez (Technical Coordinator, ITESM, Mexico) and Carlos Jaime Barrios Hernandez (WP6-CLARA Transition Team, UIS, Colombia). (Sitting left to right): Luis Nuñez (CLARA Academic Communities Director, UIS/ULA, Colombia, Venezuela), Dago Hernando Bedoya Ortiz (WP3-CLARA Transition Team, RENATA, Colombia), Francisco Vilar Brasileiro (WP6-Intrastructure and Application-Oriented Services for User Communities Manager, UFCG, Brazil), Gilberto Javier Diaz Toro (WP5-Network Resource Provision Manager, ULA, Venezuela), Salma Jalife Villalón (Project Deputy Coordinador, CLARA, Mexico), Ysabel Briceño (WP2 Deputy, ULA, Venezuela) and Leandro Ciuffo (External Advisory Committee, RNP, Brazil)

Guest posting from Bob Jones - EC Brazil workshop part 2

The second day of the EC Brazil workshop started with Ioannis Sagias from the EC presenting the e-Infrastructure programme and he highlighted that 4d4Life (Distributed Dynamic Diversity Databases for Life runs from 2009 to 2012, harvesting data from more than 40 databases across Europe), EELA2 and BELIEF-II are the current e-Infrastructure projects in which there are Brazilian partners.

We then moved on to virtual research communities with Fernando Liello who presented Auger Access - a project for the Auger Observatory in Argentina (it already has a dedicated VO on EGEE). Fernando described the access used to get data out of Auger and have remote control. A fibre is being laid to the remote site (200km) to the nearest town – Malargue. This was jointly financed and access is guaranteed for 15 years (it will be maintained by RedClara). He also presented other observatories in Latin America (e.g. VLT in Chile) EVALSO (Enabling Virtual Access to Latin-American Southern Observatories) is also laying fibres to the observatories.

Liane Tarouco, from University Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, described the research of her group into the processes of Collaborative Virtual Research Environment. They have build prototypes using avatars in an immersive environment.

Marcio Faerman from RNP gave an overview of all e-Science research in Brazil. Brazil has 160,000 researchers involved in many fields notably high energy physics (some LCG sites), astronomy and astrophysics (observatories described above), BR synchrotron Light national Lab in Sao Paul), climatology (using OurGrid), e-Health (partners in Virtual Physiological Human), bio-diversity, culture and arts.

A live piano concert between Sao Paulo and Madrid was held as part of the Master Class series. It used Conference XP made available by Microsoft Research via a sort of open source agreement to the community. The speaker, a Brazilian music professor now at Texas University had changed the code of Conference XP to improve the audio quality over 3mbit/sec transmission (shared with the picture). After the piano performance from a music student in Madrid, the music professor, sitting in Sao Paulo, gave some feedback and replayed some sections to improve the student’s technique. Then the roles were reversed and a Brazilian music student was guided by a music professor in Madrid.

Guest posting from Bob Jones - EC-Brazil workshop part 1

The state university of Sao Paulo played host to a recent EC-Brazil workshop held on 8-9 September. Bob Jones, the project director for EGEE, gave us this report on the days' events:

The goal of this workshop was to find opportunities for Brazil and the EC to work closer together on ICT subjects. The outcome of the workshop was to be used for a high-level meeting in Brasilia later in the week. It was structured as plenary sessions including three concurrent parallel sessions on specific topics such as e-Infrastructures, simulation software, microelectronics, supercomputing, network embedded intelligence and future-internet. At the end of the sessions were a couple of wrap-up panels, charged with establishing a list of suggestions on how to foster collaborative initiatives between Brazil and the EU. There were approximately 70 people present at the workshop.

A number of suggestions on collaboration concerning e-Infrastructures were collected during a panel session in which I was involved. The suggestions can be summarised as follows:

• There is already on-going collaboration between Europe and Brazil at the networking and grid infrastructure layers. This willingness to collaborate needs to be reconfirmed during the transition from EGEE to EGI and EELA to LGI. Reinforcing the inter-operation of e-Infrastructures between Brazil and Europe will allow e-Science to flourish in Brazil and permit the creation of multi-disciplinary teams spanning the continents.


• Brazil is unique from a bio-diversity (e.g. Amazon basin) and astronomical environment (hosting observatories due to climatic conditions and population distribution) standpoint, which means it is a key partner with whom Europe has to work in these areas.


• Collaboration with Europe on training of and dissemination to Brazil’s 160,000 strong research community would encourage the knowledge and use of e-Science techniques

Below are more details of the contents of the workshop:

An opening session with Brazilian representatives and Mario Campolargo for the EC set the scene. I participated in the parallel session on e-Infrastructures for which the highlights are shown below. There were about 50 people in the audience which is a lot since there were 3 parallel sessions.

Bernard Marechal presented EELA-2 and plans for LGI – A Latin American equivalent of EGI.

I presented EGEE and EGI. My slides are here.

There were then 3 presentations by Brazilian computer scientists (Antonio Tadeu Gomes – LNCC, Mario Dantas – UFSC, Philippe Navaux - UFRGS) covering theories for resource allocation, system of systems studies etc.

Gerry Devine from Reading University described the work of the METAFOR project (Common Metadata for Climate Modelling Digital Repositories). It has 11 partners, EC funding of 2.2Meuros, started March 2008 and will last 3 years. They are working on CIM – Common Information Model for climate data and will produce a UML model to be used for CMIP5 (from the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change).

Soraia Musse presented the work of PUC in Brazil on visualisation for different fields. This talk concentrated on crowd simulation and the detection of usual behaviours. It has technology links to gaming and security industries with complex simulations requiring important computing resources.

After this there was a video presentation with people from Barcelona as part of the Master Class series. The video was a short film called “spread through the air” produced by Brazilian students at the arts school that had won a critics award at the Cannes film festival.

The afternoon session was dedicated to network subjects and the future internet, during which Michael Stanton presented RNP the Brazilian NREN. RNP has links to Europe via RedClara (goes to Madrid) and the USA via ALICE. Upgrades are planned (RedClara2 & ALICE2). Cross-border fibres to neighbouring countries (Argentina, Uruguay, Chile) are foreseen for 2010.

They hope to have the 24 regional capitals in Brazil linked by 10G in 2010.

Social Scientists interested in e-Science Communities in Latin America

Grid computing has caused changes in scientific interaction and develop new social communities. In fact, the interaction between remote, international, multicultural and interdisciplinary communities, around technological facilities, such as Grid computing, is unprecedented in the history of social science.

Nowadays, social scientists are interest in Grid Computing activities in behalf of the development of scientific networks and new scientific communities in different regions of the planet. In the past days, the Group of Research in Sociology of America Latina (GRESAL) at University of Grenoble, in France, has developed a conference-debate about the challenges and opportunities for the academic and scientific networks developed in Latin America.

Then, French sociologists invited Professor Luis Núñez de Villavicencio for this meeting. Luis Núñez de Villavicencio is a Venezuelan scientist, professor of the Universidad de los Andes at Mérida, Venezuela, scientific director of the Venezuela National Center of Advanced Computing (CeCalcULA) and one of the leaders and promoters of the academic and scientific networks in Latin America.

Latin American scientific networks based on Grid Computing, have allowed the interaction and participation of projects among countries than before, for political or economic reasons it was unthinkable to propose a collaboration. Indeed, this partnership around e-Science possibilities, allows the treatment of regional problems, and contribute to participate Latin American scientists in global projects. Latin America scientific networks developed in this context have enabled mutual understanding, with real transnational projects, and facilitate the dialogue between Latin America and the world.