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Programs Overview / Coastal Research | |||||||||||||
SURA Coastal Research Program SURA Coastal Newsletter, September 2008 Background As far back as 2000, the SURA Coastal Research Committee began to develop a vision for an open-access, distributed scientific laboratory. Now, Over six years later, that vision is approaching reality. The SURA Coast Ocean Observing and Prediction (SCOOP) program is a cornerstone of SURA's coastal research effort.
The SCOOP program involves several partner institutions working together to prototype an information technology-(IT) based infrastructure designed to enable a new way to do science. Building on SCOOP's demonstrated successes, SURA's Coastal Research Committee embraced the concept of creating a Distributed Coastal Laboratory (DCL) to support research and engineering studies on multi-faceted coastal processes, promote public education and outreach on the importance of coastal phenomena, and facilitate numerous practical applications. It is envisioned that the research conducted in connection with the DCL will extend well beyond SCOOP, to provide for open access to information on water quality, coastal and wetlands ecology, river hydrology, shelf and estuarine circulation while it continues to advance capabilities for predicting coastal inundation and coastal land loss. A resolution supporting the promotion of the DCL was endorsed by the full SURA Board of Trustees at their bi-annual meeting on April 18, 2007. Evolution SCOOP has achieved some remarkable inter-institutional collaborations and systems-integration accomplishments. But the existing system remains a prototype -- proof of concept -- that must be developed into the DCL of the future. Several target mission objectives have been offered by researchers for a virtual coastal laboratory, including: 1. a test bed for the transition from research to operations; These goals provide the motivation for the transition from a SCOOP prototype to a reliable and sustainable DCL. The DCL has the potential to be a site where datasets, models analysis tools and powerful computing resources could all be utilized by "virtual visiting" scientists. Visiting scientists would log in to utilize these resources, to perform their experiments (e.g., evaluate new wetting/drying algorithms), and them move on. While these concepts have been prototyped for inundation in SCOOP, they could be applied to coastal science in general. These are the functions of a "test bed" for advancing "community models," beyond standard practice. Distributed resources such as SURAgrid and TeraGrid can become the foundation of a DCL. Ideally, scientists utilizing the system would not be aware that their models were being run on a network of computers or that the data inputs and archived output would also be distributed. The SCOOP prototype is still a research endeavor that will require substantial "hardening" before it can become a time-critical tool for practical applications. However, it is a viable prototype that can become an operational system that leverages the academic community. It can also engage private-sector and/or government partners to take on complementary operational responsibilities. Construction of the prototype is now in progress. The current challenge to finish construction of the prototype and leverage the SCOOP infrastructure for one or more new science scenarios (e.g., circulation modeling), thereby making coastal scientists aware of how the system works and how they can use it to advance their science. Links
SURA Coastal Research Program Contacts Dr. L. Don Wright, Director of Coastal Research |
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© Copyright 2008 Southeastern Universities Research Association. All Rights Reserved. |
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