WissGrid
Grid for Science
As a D-Grid project, WissGrid’s objective is to establish long-term organisational and technical D-Grid structures for the academic world. WissGrid combines the heterogeneous needs from a variety of scientific disciplines and develops concepts for the long-term sustainable use of the organisational and technical grid infrastructure. In this context, the project aims to strengthen the organisational cooperation of scientists in the grid and to lower the entry barriers for new community grids. Three key tasks have been identified from WissGrid’s objectives:
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With the operational model, a representation of interests will be established for academic users and communities in D-Grid. It is of particular importance here that the location independent use of IT resources in D-Grid can provide users with added value, based on their requirements. We develop a basic organisational frame for the academic communities to lobby for their specific and interdisciplinary requirements, lowering the entry barriers for communities and individual users and considerably improving the efficiency of organisational processes for this audience. Similarly, we aim to develop new models of location independent financing of IT resources for scientific research projects as a cooperative support model. We will pursue this in coordination with representatives of the universities and funding authorities.
Using the grid represents a conceptual and technical challenge for new scientific users and communities. For this reason, blueprints are necessary for migration to the grid and for community-specific user support. The blueprints will build on the experiences and best practices of member communities such as AstroGrid-D, C3-Grid, HEPGrid, MediGRID and TextGrid, from the first D-Grid funding period. Educational material, organisational concepts and processes are developed and documented for this purpose to ease the initial steps of integrating new communities into D-Grid. Expert advisers will provide support based on the developed blueprints, for new academic communities. The existing support structures of DGrid for operating system, grid middleware and basic tools for resource providers will be enhanced with application-level support structures. Furthermore, new communities are supported to create their own, discipline-related support structures. With the operation model, a framework for supporting scientific communities in D-Grid is being developed.
The grid has to provide for good scientific practice. This requires the long-term availability of primary research data as well as the archiving of data for re-use in further research projects. Prerequisites for this are, for example, persistent identifiers and metadata, which enable retrieval and efficient handling of large volumes of data. A general concept for the long-term archiving of primary research data for grid communities will be developed and implemented by WissGrid. The long-term archiving will be organisationally and technically embedded in the blueprints and the operation model. As a result, new community grids and existing communities will receive support to set up long-term archiving of their primary research data.
The work of WissGrid is carried out in cooperation with D-Grid gGmbH and in close coordination with the DGI and the DGSE. The coordinator is the President of the University of Göttingen, Prof. Dr. Kurt von Figura.
Contact: info@wissgrid.de