Transcript The NCRIS Capability “Platforms for Collaboration”

eResearch Infrastructure
an NCRIS investment
Supporting Australian research
in an increasing technological
and information rich world
Rhys Francis
Executive Director
The Australian eResearch
Infrastructure Council
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Why is eResearch happening now?
2
Why is eResearch happening now?
3
Why is eResearch happening now?
4
We are in a technological age..
Capacity
Moore’s law, clock speed (?), bandwidth, storage
density, nano, photonics
Connectivity
Internet, wireless, mobile, coverage, always
connected, never lost, globalisation
Content
Born digital, imaging, sensing, modelling, simulating,
aggregating, relating, sharing
Interface
Speech, 3d projection/sound, haptics, non-rigid
displays, visualisation, immersion
Products
Ubiquitous computing, smart appliances, automation,
labour reduction
Complexity
Robustness, seamlessness, self-organising,
evolutionary, not understood
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Not all technology explodes at once …
Capacity
Explosive growth started 50-60 years ago
Connectivity
Explosive growth started 15-20 years ago
Content
Explosive growth started 3-5 years ago
Interface
The soft visual, smart speech, sensed
interface maybe around in 10 years time
Products
Smart autonomous devices maybe 25-100
years
Complexity
Major problem, complexity maybe a forever
challenge
6
Why Does ICT matter?
Our society was shaped by a truth: only people process information
•
•
•
communication was between people
everything made was made by somebody
all decisions were a product of mind
For most of history it was IMPOSSIBLE to speak to anybody at a distance
From
1870
to 1990:
ICT publish
deliveredinformation
that ability toand
8% have
of the itworld’s
population
In•the
past,
no-one
could
accessible
to
• From 1990 to 2007: ICT delivered that ability to 50% of the world’s population
everyone
• This
possibility
is now
available
more
than
15%
of theinworld’s
population
ICT
means
that
voice
and
images
can
be
sent
from
anyone
to anyone
Until
now,
it was
only
possible
totosocialise,
work
or
play the
withworld
neighbours
• The
web
shows
one of the
highest
growth rate of technology adoption ever
else
in the
world,
anywhere,
at a
• ICT
is drawing
this “tyranny
ofmoments
distance”notice
to a close
The promise is expansive:
New collaboration,
and remote
technologies
stand
• • Improved
efficiency,immersion
reduced waste,
sharedpresence
experiences,
enhanced
poised to redefine
human
interaction
communities,
increased
variety
•
Information, entertainment and knowledge gathered, kept, synthesised,
processed and delivered to suit the needs of any moment and every individual
at marginal cost
•
Nothing ever lost, nothing ever accidentally forgotten or missed, nobody ever
without help or assistance
7
The world is connecting - it’s a hand held world
Worldwide
Cell Phones
Internet
PCs
2005
32%
17%
14%
2010
48%
26%
20%
8
The world is connecting - human to human
9
Population
1 AD
~200 million
The future
1000 AD
~300 million
Where we are
1500 AD
~500 million
Our heritage
1750 AD
800 million
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The human dilemma
•
An avalanche of information results from vastly increased connectivity,
computing and data storage
•
Vast amounts of information arise from sensor development but no person can
peruse it
•
A step change in population, development, processing capacity provides a
multiplicative step change in the amount of research in progress
•
What if we propose no substantive change in our ability to learn and
understand
– the information space understood by any researcher must shrink as a fraction of the
available information
•
How do we evolve from research in a knowledge poor environment, our
heritage, to research in a knowledge rich environment, our children’s future
– from being valued for a lifetime gaining knowledge
– to a world where everything ever known by anyone is available to all
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There are various paths forward
• Work with
higherapplying
bandwidth
facultiesin three ways
eResearch
is about
ICThuman
to knowledge
– The interactive modeling and visualisation theme
•
• Make knowledge more accessible
Enhance comprehension - the higher bandwidth agenda
– The smarter tools solution
– We need the means to easily find and use information where ever it is
in to
teams
– • WeLearn
need to
thework
means
assimilate more information
– The collaborate or perish proposition
•
• Build
servants more
intelligent thanagenda
us
Enable
collaboration
- the interoperation
Thethe
magic
wand
approach
– We –need
means
to work
easily and naturally in virtual teams
themeans
human
ability
to learn
– • WeExtend
need the
to ‘join’
together
content, tools and laboratories
– Open pandora’s box, augmentation
•
• …Knowledge
others ? - the smart tools agenda
Encode
….slow down
– We need the means to use knowledge without knowing it
– We need the means to encode semantics as well as information
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eResearch Strategy (circa 2006)
Service Clusters
•
Data
– outreach, curation, data management
– meta-services, location, access,
movement
– practice, providers and users
•
Computing
– capability computing facilities
– national computing environment
•
•
Access
– the Australian access federation
– the Australian research and education
network
Continuing Need for a Focus
– through national coordination
•
Human Capabilities
– People, skills and understanding
•
Linkage of eResearch Resources
– seamless access to resources
•
Access to Data
– Most data is outside the research
system
Interoperation
– discipline services (tools ((software))
– user and operations support
– collaboration services support
•
Thematic Issues
•
Structural and Cultural Change
– evolution of organisational
structures and cultures
•
Awareness and Support
– develop researchers’ ability to
adopt eResearch
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Platforms for Collaboration (circa 2007)
•
•
•
•
Share and access data in the commons
National registries and access services
Connect repositories to the commons
Data frameworks
• A shared national computational facility
• Domain oriented modeling capabilities
Capability Computing
Advanced models
The Data Commons
Data Federations
ANDS $24M
ASSDA $3M
NCI $24M
Interoperation
AAF $2M
AARNet $3M
Access
Research connectivity
Seamless reach
• Shared authorisation framework for resources
• Connect researchers at required bandwidth
ARCS $22M
Collaboration services
Research workflows
• Services linking resources nation wide
• Collaboration and workflow tools
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Extract from Revised Roadmap…
•
In the main, the capabilities identified in the 2006 Roadmap are supported
•
A number of additional needs result in a reshaping, and in the most part a
supplementing, of elements in individual capabilities.
• The Humanities, Arts and the Social Sciences (HASS) are specifically
recognised as an important capability area
• The significance of information and communication technologies (ICT)
as an underpinning and pervasive capability is strongly acknowledged
• The inclusion of data itself as collaborative research infrastructure is
emphasised
•
The need to further enable and recognise the linkages between specific
capabilities has resulted in the grouping of related areas
15
Revising Platforms (circa 2008)
•
Access frameworks and access enabling services
– National rules and agreements to simplify sharing
•
Collaboration support services
– Applying ‘social technologies’ to research
•
Data capture, management and curation services
– Providing data access as a research input / Managing research data output
•
Modelling, visualisation and computational analysis services
– Modelling where we need it, massed where the data is
•
Connectivity services, backbone and end-to-end
– Person to person / person to resource / resource to resource
•
Discipline development and support services
– Resources to build new services for research
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eResearch: enable, transition and co-ordinate
•
Enable eResearch:
– access and authentication systems
– data storage systems
– a range of high performance computing facilities
– high performance communications networks
•
Transition to eResearch:
– data federations: the Australian Research Data Commons
– collaborative tools, remote access, virtual organisations and shared
workspaces: the Australian Research Collaboration Service
– building research environments that bridge research communities
•
Coordinate:
– promote awareness of the research gains possible from advanced ICT
– build bridges across research infrastructure and research investments
– reduce policy impediments to collaboration
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Our proposed investment structure….
Co-ordination Component
Shared Infrastructure
bridge building
Shared Spaces
collaboration
Research
Networks
Advanced
Computing
Shared Data
federation and re-use
Data
Storage
Access
Methods
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Now to the title of the talk…..
• The fascinating thing about the research data management
problem…is…
– We understand the problem
– We understand the solution
– We have the technology, ICT and legal
• The problem is: why exactly do we still have a problem ?
– Maybe the growth rate is the problem, we are just swamped
– Maybe the road rules to the data highway still need to be agreed
– Maybe our expectations are a contributing problem
– Maybe we can’t do everything at once
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The Road Rules for the Data Highway†
• The revised roadmap contains a very big challenge
– related to our expectations
– it separates data retention from data federation
• I haven’t really said what the difference is
– just that we need such a difference to make progress
– retention is infrastructural, the purpose is open ended
– federation and re-use is purpose driven, we don’t need it everywhere
– and we all know data value is grey scale and not black and white
• I am asking you
– to help us spell out the “road rules” for the data highway
– road rules that make sense of retention infrastructure
†Courtesy
of a discussion with Tim Barker
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…and a thought on the big picture
• Enterprise ICT is building towards integrated corporate memory
• We need to
– retain data and its connections into such knowledge spaces
• In a born digital world, metadata need only connect data to the knowledge
space, if we also have the knowledge space
• We will less need to establish encompassing world descriptions as
ontologies to describe the context of data
– publish and join windows into enterprise knowledge spaces
• We need technologies that support enterprise, collaboration and public ICT
domains, and manage the boundaries between them
– develop interfaces that use connections to enhance data re-use
• We need the capability to achieve retention and only later to achieve re-use
by re-computing connections between the data
• We need to promote, publish and connect data as a first class
element of the world of born digital knowledge
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Thank you
For further information, contact:
Rhys Francis
Executive Director
Australian eResearch Infrastructure Council
Email: [email protected]
Website: www.pfc.org.au
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eResearch Infrastructure
an NCRIS investment
Supporting Australian research
in an increasing technological
and information rich world
Rhys Francis
Executive Director
The Australian eResearch
Infrastructure Council
23