[CAnet - news] Cyber-infrastructure for cleaner drinking water

For more information on this item please visit the CANARIE CA*net 4 Optical
Internet program web site at http://www.canarie.ca/canet4/library/list.html
-------------------------------------------

[Although cyber-infrastructure is often associated with high performance
computing it has much broader application and societal impact in areas
outside HPC, as illustrated in this example.  Again SOA with web services
for networks, sensors and databases are key to enabling this type of
cyber-infrastructure.  CANARIE has also funded related projects under the
CANARIE Intelligent Infrastructure Program. Some excerpts from the Science
Grid this http://www.interactions.org/sgtw/ -- BSA]

 
http://www.interactions.org/sgtw/2006/0510/cleaner_more.html


As population levels and the rate of urban development rise, our society
grows increasingly concerned with balancing the need to maintain water
supplies of adequate quantity and quality for human use with preserving the
integrity of aquatic ecosystems. Common practices associated with modern
living often negatively impact the environment. Commercial fertilization of
agricultural fields can result in significant run-off of nutrients and
microorganisms into nearby surface waters. In some U.S. cities, untreated
stormwater, containing substantial loadings of pathogens and chemicals, is
discharged into the nearest body of water. And along some major U.S. rivers,
drinking water intakes are located downstream from wastewater treatment
plants. Because many of these issues are tied to where people live and work,
scientists and engineers must also factor in social and economic impacts
when considering solutions to these problems.

The goal of CLEANER, the Collaborative Large-Scale Engineering Analysis
Network for Environmental Research, is to transform and advance the
scientific and engineering knowledge base in order to address the challenges
of complex, large-scale, human-stressed environmental systems. To understand
these complex situations, scientists and engineers need to collect and
integrate real-time data from watersheds, rivers, estuaries, coasts and
cities throughout the country, and environmental engineers must integrate
information from the laboratory or a single field site with information from
larger, more geographically diverse observatories. It is only now, with the
advent of grid computing, new data-mining techniques, and novel wireless
sensors, that researchers are in a position to answer cutting-edge questions
about hydrologic and environmental phenomena.

"CLEANER is primarily focused on water in all its forms," explains Barbara
Minsker from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, principal
investigator of the CLEANER Project Office. "To study and understand the
state of water in the United States, we will have to use many types of data
that have different scales, units, formats, quality and levels of
uncertainty. Creating cyberinfrastructure that helps our community to find,
obtain, transform, analyze and assimilate these data into many types of
models is both a great challenge and a great opportunity."

As early as 2001, scientists and engineers discussed the need for a
large-scale environmental research network that would enable them to better
understand human-stressed environmental systems, their stressors, and the
links between them. The idea of CLEANER evolved over the next four years,
and in July 2005 the U.S. National Science Foundation awarded $2 million to
a coalition of 12 institutions, led by the University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign, to establish the CLEANER Project Office. The project
office is co-directed by Minsker, Charles Haas of Drexel University and
Jerald Schnoor of the University of Iowa.

Recognizing that the study of the aquatic ecosystem cuts across scientific
disciplines, the CLEANER project office works with the Consortium of
Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Science, Inc. to develop a
dual-purpose network called WATERS, the Water and Environmental Research
Systems Network. By July 2007, CUAHSI and the CLEANER Project Office will
produce an environmental engineering and hydrologic science research plan
that identifies cutting-edge scientific questions that may be addressed by
the WATERS Network, and lays out an overall network design that includes
research and education plans, timelines, milestones, and the scope of
facilities, resources and research required. Ultimately, the plan will lay
the foundation for a new infrastructure that will transform the way both
environmental research and environmental education are conducted.

"The CLEANER Project Office's current mission is to work with the
environmental science and engineering, social science, education and CUAHSI
communities to define the WATERS Network," says Minsker. "We will be forming
a community consortium that will propose and manage the network. The
preliminary WATERS program plan will be ready in 2007, followed by
preparation of a project execution plan in 2008 and, if the project is
funded, construction will begin in 2011."

For more information on CLEANER (and the WATERS Network) and to sign up for
the CLEANER quarterly newsletter, go to http://cleaner.ncsa.uiuc.edu.


-------------------------------------
To SUBSCRIBE:
send a blank e-mail message to
[email protected]

To UNSUBSCRIBE:
send a blank email message to
[email protected]
-------------------------------------

These news items and comments are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect
those  of the CANARIE board or management.

-----------
[email protected]
www.canarie.ca/~bstarn
skype: pocketpro
SkypeIn: +1 614 441-9603


_______________________________________________
news mailing list
[email protected]
http://lists.canarie.ca/mailman/listinfo/news