Digital Commons Network^™

Software For Monitoring Forest Change In Tropical West Africa Using Satellite Remote Sensing, Michael Wimberly

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Satellite remote sensing is an essential source of data on forest landscape change that is necessary for estimating carbon stocks, assessing biodiversity, and developing conservation plans to sustain ecosystem services. The Upper Guinean Forest region of West Africa, a global biodiversity hotspot, currently lacks timely, consistent, and accurate long-term forest monitoring systems suitable for decision support. Major limitations include data gaps due to frequent cloud cover and limited satellite coverage. To address these limitations, we developed the West African Forest Degradation Data System (WAForDD) to use all available Landsat imagery to monitor forest change in the tropical forest zone of …

Software For Monitoring Forest Change In Tropical West Africa Using Satellite Remote Sensing, Michael Wimberly

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Satellite remote sensing is an essential source of data on forest landscape change that is necessary for estimating carbon stocks, assessing biodiversity, and developing conservation plans to sustain ecosystem services. The Upper Guinean Forest region of West Africa, a global biodiversity hotspot, currently lacks timely, consistent, and accurate long-term forest monitoring systems suitable for decision support. Major limitations include data gaps due to frequent cloud cover and limited satellite coverage. To address these limitations, we developed the West African Forest Degradation Data System (WAForDD) to use all available Landsat imagery to monitor forest change in the tropical forest zone of …

Advances In The Science And Technology Of Simulating Water, Nutrient, Soil And Plant Interactions And Dynamics In Space And Time, Tim Green

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

The Agricultural Ecosystems Services (AgES) distributed watershed model is being developed as a component-based model for continuous daily simulation. Current case studies use AgES to simulate space-time patterns of soil moisture and infrequent runoff events in a dryland field-scale watershed in northern Colorado, contributions of irrigated agriculture to a mixed-landuse watershed near metropolitan Denver, and tile drainage contributing to high nitrate loads in Iowa, USA. These watersheds (56 ha to 581 km2) provide comparative studies to address model complexity across various scales with different types and amounts of data. Key advances include enhanced process simulation (1) coupling plant uptake of …

Going Serverless: Evaluating The Potential Of Serverless Computing For Environmental Modeling Application Hosting, Baojia Zhang, Wes J. Lloyd, Olaf David, George Leavesley

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Recently serverless computing platforms have emerged that provide automatic web service hosting in the cloud. These platforms are promoted for their ability to host “micro” services to end users while seamlessly integrating key features including 24/7 high availability, fault tolerance, and automatic scaling of resources to meet user demand. Serverless Computing environments abstract the majority of infrastructure management tasks including VM/container creation, and load balancer configuration. A key benefit of serverless computing is FREE access to cloud computing resources. Many platforms provide free access for up to 1,000,000 service requests/month with 1 GB of memory for 400,000 seconds/month. Additionally, serverless …

The Agricultural Ecosystems Services (Ages) Watershed Model Integrated Into The Environmental Resources Assessment And Management System (Erams) And Cloud Services Integration Platform (Csip), Nathan Lighthart, Olaf David, Timothy R. Green, Gregory S. Mcmaster, David Arden Patterson, Mazdak Arabi, Holm Kipka

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Distributing models to various users can be difficult and prone to error, and therefore may negatively reflect on the program. Model distribution typically involves users downloading and installing the model following setup instructions. However, if this step is not handled correctly, the model is not able to be used correctly. Deploying a model through a web interface allows the user to focus on running the model rather than ensuring the model is setup correctly. The eRAMS/CSIP platform is designed to provide visual tools for models to be parameterized and connected to input data (eRAMS), and run using a remote web …

Selecting Cloud Platform Services Based On Application Requirements, Bridger Ronald Larson

Theses and Dissertations

As virtualization platforms or cloud computing have become more of a commodity, many more organizations have been utilizing them. Many organizations and technologies have emerged to fulfill those cloud needs. Cloud vendors provide similar services, but the differences can have significant impact on specific applications. Selecting the right provider is difficult and confusing because of the number of options. It can be difficult to determine which application characteristics will impact the choice of implementation. There has not been a concise process to select which cloud vendor and characteristics are best suited for the application requirements and organization requirements. This thesis …

A Comprehensive Python Toolkit For Harnessing Cloud-Based High-Throughput Computing To Support Hydrologic Modeling Workflows, Scott D. Christensen

Theses and Dissertations

Advances in water resources modeling are improving the information that can be supplied to support decisions that affect the safety and sustainability of society, but these advances result in models being more computationally demanding. To facilitate the use of cost- effective computing resources to meet the increased demand through high-throughput computing (HTC) and cloud computing in modeling workflows and web applications, I developed a comprehensive Python toolkit that provides the following features: (1) programmatic access to diverse, dynamically scalable computing resources; (2) a batch scheduling system to queue and dispatch the jobs to the computing resources; (3) data management for …

Big Data: Challenges And Opportunities For Digital Libraries, Richard Hacken

Faculty Publications

Presented as a Keynote Address to the International Conference on Computing in Engineering and the Sciences in Istanbul, Turkey, on July 30, 2015.

This is an abstract of the speech:

Thanks to technological progress, thanks to the copious Internet, thanks to geometrically burgeoning social media and to quickly proliferating sensors, the flood of data available to us is surging larger and larger, faster and faster. Paradigms for management and analysis are at the core of data-driven businesses and institutions, fueling the velocity of scientific research and development. The phrase “Big Data” was itself coined by scientists as they manipulated exploding …

A Cloud-Based Modflow Service For Aquifer Management Decision Support, David Jones, Norm Jones, James Greer, Jim Nelson

Faculty Publications

A framework to publish simplified MODFLOW groundwater modeling capabilities to a web interface for use by water managers and stakeholders is presented. Numerical modeling simulations can assist aquifer management decisions, but the amount of time and professional expertise required to wield modern groundwater models often exceeds the resources of regulating agencies – even for simple modeling tasks that are repetitive in nature. The framework is capable of automating such modeling tasks, accepting user input, executing MODFLOW, and generating specialized results including maps and modeling reports. This framework was used to build a pilot system for an aquifer in central Utah, …

Early To Adopt And Early To Discontinue: The Impact Of Self-Perceived And Actual It-Knowledge On Technology Use Behaviors Of End Users, Rohit Aggarwal, David Kryscynski, Vishal Midha, Harpeet Singh

Faculty Publications

For organizations to achieve the benefits of new IT systems their users must adopt and then actually use these new systems. Recent models help to articulate the potentially different explanations for why some users will adopt and then continue using new technologies, but these models have not explicitly incorporated IT-knowledge. This is particularly important in contexts where the user base may be non-IT professionals—i.e. the users may vary substantially in their basic IT-knowledge. We draw upon psychology to argue that in situations where there is wide variance in actual IT-knowledge there will often exist U relationship between actual and self-perceived …

Modeling-As-A-Service (Maas) Using The Cloud Services Innovation Platform (Csip), Olaf David, Wes Lloyd, Ken Rojas, Mazdak Arabi, Frank Geter, James Ascough, Tim Green, G. Leavesley, Jack Carlson

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Cloud infrastructures for modelling activities such as data processing, performing environmental simulations, or conducting model calibrations/optimizations provide a cost effective alternative to traditional high performance computing approaches. Cloud-based modelling examples emerged into the more formal notion: "Model-as-a-Service" (MaaS). This paper presents the Cloud Services Innovation Platform (CSIP) as a software framework offering MaaS. It describes both the internal CSIP infrastructure and software architecture that manages cloud resources for typical modelling tasks, and the use of CSIP's "ModelServices API" for a modelling application. CSIP's architecture supports fast and resource aware auto-scaling of computational resources. An example model service is presented: the …

The Virtual Machine (Vm) Scaler: An Infrastructure Manager Supporting Environmental Modeling On Iaas Clouds, Wes J. Lloyd, Olaf David, Mazdak Arabi, James C. Ascough Ii, Timothy R. Green, Jack R. Carlson, Ken W. Rojas

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) clouds provide a new medium for deployment of environmental modeling applications. Harnessing advancements in virtualization, IaaS clouds can provide dynamic scalable infrastructure to better support scientific modeling computational demands. Providing scientific modeling “as-a-service” requires dynamic scaling of server infrastructure to adapt to changing user workloads. This paper presents the Virtual Machine (VM) Scaler, an autonomic resource manager for IaaS Clouds. We have developed VM-Scaler, a REST/JSON-based web services application which supports infrastructure provisioning and management to support scientific modeling for the Cloud Services Innovation Platform (CSIP) [Lloyd et al. 2012]. VM-Scaler harnesses the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) …

Data Provisioning For The Object Modeling System (Oms), Jack R. Carlson, Olaf David, Wes J. Lloyd, George H. Leavesley, Ken W. Rojas, Timothy R. Green, Mazdak Arabi, Lucas Yaege, Hom Kipka

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

The Object Modelling System (OMS) platform supports initiatives to build or re-factor agro-environmental models and deploy them in different business contexts as model services on cloud computing platforms. Whether traditional desktop, client-server, or emerging cloud deployments, success especially at the enterprise level relies on stable and efficient data provisioning to the models. In this paper we describe recent experience and trends with tools and services deployed to cloud platforms. Also, systematic, sustained data stewardship and alignment with standards organizations impart stability to data provisioning efforts.

Back-End Science Model Integration For Ecological Risk Assessment, Tao Hong, Chancellor Pascale, Jonathan Flaishans, Marcia Snyder, S. Thomas Purucker

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) relies on a number of ecological risk assessment models that have been developed over 30-plus years of regulating pesticide exposure and risks under Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) and the Endangered Species Act. Since computing technology have changed dramatically over this time period, constituent legacy models often contain algorithms based on source code with defunct dependencies and/or have been integrated with graphical user interface elements no longer compatible with current operating systems. Model migration to modern web applications creates integration challenges for back-end science model code residing on a server. An example …

Tethys: A Software Framework For Web-Based Modeling And Decision Support Applications, Norm Jones, Jim Nelson, Nathan Swain, Scott Christensen, David Tarboton, Pabitra Dash

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

We have developed a software framework called Tethys to aid in the creation of web-based water resource modeling applications. This suite is a Python-based scripting environment that leverages open source tools for geoprocessing of spatial data, map rendering and visualization, distributed computing, and database management. The system makes it possible to deploy a calibrated, high-resolution watershed or surface water model as a web-based application for decision support. The framework provides data managements, access to computing resources, and pluggable components (e.g. plots, maps and user controls) that enable rapid development of modeling applications. We have used the system to develop prototype …

Enabling Water Science At The Cuahsi Water Data Center, Alva Couch, Richard Hooper, Jon Pollak, Marie Martin, Martin Seul

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

The CUAHSI Water Data Center (WDC) is a community-governed, multi-disciplinary data center focused upon the needs of water-related science in all academic disciplines. The WDC build upon the successes of the 10-year effort to develop the CUAHSI Hydrologic Information System (HIS), and looks beyond HIS toward providing next-generation water data services. In partnership with the National Science Foundation, the WDC seeks to set the standard for data publication, persistence, and reliability, by providing formal user support services, using cloud-based abstractions and services, building new and accessible user interfaces to data, and establishing and sustaining data curation processes centered around optimizing …

Developing An Architecture Framework For Cloud-Based, Multi-User, Finite Element Pre-Processing, Jared Calvin Briggs

Theses and Dissertations

This research proposes an architecture for a cloud-based, multi-user FEA pre-processing system, where multiple engineers can access and operate on the same model in a parallel environment. A prototype is discussed and tested, the results of which show that a multi-user preprocessor, where all computing is done on a central server that is hosted on a high performance system, provides significant benefits to the analysis team. These benefits include a shortened preprocessing time, and potentially higher-quality models.

Hydrotam: 3d Model For Hydrodynamic And Transport Processes In Coastal Waters, Lale Balas, Aslı Numanoğlu Genç, Asu Inan

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

HYDROTAM is a Geographic Information Systems (GIS) integrated three-dimensional baroclinic numerical model that has been developed to simulate the hydrodynamic and transport processes in coastal waters. The infrastructure of the program is based on cloud computing technology. GIS platform of HYDROTAM facilitates the time consuming task of preparation of data input and output. On the model interface, all functions of the MS Silverlight framework are available to the user with a menu driven graphical user interface (GUI). The numerical model consists of hydrodynamic, transport, turbulence and wave propagation model components. In the hydrodynamic model component, the 3D Navier–Stokes equations are …

Environmental Modelling Using Cloud Computing Tools: Case Studies And Examples, L. Matejicek

International Congress on Environmental Modelling and Software

Cloud computing represents an emerging computing paradigm, which offers delivering a variety of computing services in a way that has not been experienced previously. In order to develop advanced simulations, environmental modelling must be adapted to this more powerful and efficient computing tool. Traditional model calculations are taken into the sphere of interconnected data and more accessible software tools, which rationalize the way they manage their resources. Moreover, information systems such as GIS, and case-oriented software tools for data pre-processing and visualization can be accessible for a wide range of users participating in research projects. In order to document distribution …

Framework To Secure Cloud-Based Medical Image Storage And Management System Communications, Timothy James Rostrom

Theses and Dissertations

Picture Archiving and Communication Systems (PACS) have been traditionally constrained to the premises of the healthcare provider. This has limited the availability of these systems in many parts of the world and mandated major costs in infrastructure for those who employ them. Public cloud services could be a solution that eases the cost of ownership and provides greater flexibility for PACS implementations. This could make it possible to bring medical imaging services to places where it was previously unavailable and reduce the costs associated with these services for those who utilize them. Moving these systems to public cloud infrastructure requires …