Aberystwyth professor thrilled at HPC launch
As one of the oldest and largest Departments of Geography and Earth Science in Britain, the Institute of Geography and Earth Sciences, IGES (http://www.aber.ac.uk/en/iges) at Aberystwyth has always been at the cutting edge of innovations in teaching and research.
The launch of the HPC Wales super computer project (featured on this blog earlier this week) will help ensure it stays in the vanguard studying human geography and physical geography.
And, according to Professor Richard Lucas at the IGES, it will open up new avenues for collaborations with small to medium-size businesses (SMEs), Government organisations and educational institutions in Wales, as well as in the UK and internationally.
“Here at Aberystwyth, we are very excited at the potential opportunities the HPC project will open up.
“It will give us a massive competitive edge in research and analysing date and we are looking forward immensely to the project getting underway.
"At Aberystwyth, a significant element of our research focuses on the use of ground, airborne and space-borne imagery for better understanding and quantifying environmental change, particularly in relation to terrestrial vegetation, glaciers and hydrological systems.
“Modeling these systems is also an important component of our work and there are strong links with elements of human geography. Areas of particular interest include understanding and quantifying the response of subtropical and tropical ecosystems and glaciers to environmental change, hydrological and glaciological modeling, carbon cycle science and conservation of biodiversity.
“Many of the datasets exploited in this research are large for several reasons. Data from the spaceborne optical and radar sensors that we use are available over entire countries (e.g., Australia, Chile) and have and continue to be acquired on a regular basis.
“These time-series datasets offer unique insights into the past and present state of landscapes and can allow us to understand, model and predict changes that might occur in the future.
“With the provision of HPC, we have a far greater capacity to process and analyse these data to address issues relating particularly to human impacts on landscapes and changes associated with climatic variation.
“We also have very large quantities of ground and airborne datasets.
“For example, our LiDAR (Light Detection And Ranging optical remote sensing technology) datasets contain millions of points representing the three dimensional structure of forests and landscapes.
“With hyperspectral cameras and sensors, images of high spatial resolution and containing a large number of image bands are used. The size and processing costs of these data are enormous but the HPC will now allow us to fully exploit existing and newly collected data. We will also have greater confidence in taking on larger projects involving these data that will benefit a wide range of users.
“We are obviously very excited at the potential opportunities the HPC project will open up.
“We have long outgrown our current computing facilities and the HPC is very timely as it provides us with the capacity we now need and the opportunity to generate new and useful information, knowledge and skills for wider benefit.”
Professor Lucas added:“We have already collected a huge quantity of data and information here at IGES. For example, we have mapped all the habitats in Wales – a massive job in its own right.
“We now want to have the capacity to implement further mapping and monitoring of habitats from both airborne and space-borne imagery.
“We have also been working in Australia with the Japanese Space Agency to carry out mapping work there, so you can see there is a global scale to our work.
“Having worked hard to collect all this data, we need to be able to process it properly and efficiently to monitor changes in eco-systems.
“Currently, we are pretty old-fashioned in the way we analyse data, having to copy large quantities of data from one computer to another.
“It can be pretty frustrating at times.
“HPC would allow us to have the computer capacity we need and it would allow us to produce multiple ‘products’ from the data we have collected.
“Quite simply, we have grown out of our current computer structure. HPC will allow us to be much more efficient in what we do and it will allow us to have better links with other institutions across the globe and, of course, better and more productive links with businesses here in Wales.”
A 3D LiDAR image of Lake Vyrnwy dam and forests.
See previous posts starting at -
http://sirgarblog.blogspot.com/2010/07/new-40m-super-computer-project-for.html
The launch of the HPC Wales super computer project (featured on this blog earlier this week) will help ensure it stays in the vanguard studying human geography and physical geography.
And, according to Professor Richard Lucas at the IGES, it will open up new avenues for collaborations with small to medium-size businesses (SMEs), Government organisations and educational institutions in Wales, as well as in the UK and internationally.
“Here at Aberystwyth, we are very excited at the potential opportunities the HPC project will open up.
“It will give us a massive competitive edge in research and analysing date and we are looking forward immensely to the project getting underway.
"At Aberystwyth, a significant element of our research focuses on the use of ground, airborne and space-borne imagery for better understanding and quantifying environmental change, particularly in relation to terrestrial vegetation, glaciers and hydrological systems.
“Modeling these systems is also an important component of our work and there are strong links with elements of human geography. Areas of particular interest include understanding and quantifying the response of subtropical and tropical ecosystems and glaciers to environmental change, hydrological and glaciological modeling, carbon cycle science and conservation of biodiversity.
“Many of the datasets exploited in this research are large for several reasons. Data from the spaceborne optical and radar sensors that we use are available over entire countries (e.g., Australia, Chile) and have and continue to be acquired on a regular basis.
“These time-series datasets offer unique insights into the past and present state of landscapes and can allow us to understand, model and predict changes that might occur in the future.
“With the provision of HPC, we have a far greater capacity to process and analyse these data to address issues relating particularly to human impacts on landscapes and changes associated with climatic variation.
“We also have very large quantities of ground and airborne datasets.
“For example, our LiDAR (Light Detection And Ranging optical remote sensing technology) datasets contain millions of points representing the three dimensional structure of forests and landscapes.
“With hyperspectral cameras and sensors, images of high spatial resolution and containing a large number of image bands are used. The size and processing costs of these data are enormous but the HPC will now allow us to fully exploit existing and newly collected data. We will also have greater confidence in taking on larger projects involving these data that will benefit a wide range of users.
“We are obviously very excited at the potential opportunities the HPC project will open up.
“We have long outgrown our current computing facilities and the HPC is very timely as it provides us with the capacity we now need and the opportunity to generate new and useful information, knowledge and skills for wider benefit.”
Professor Lucas added:“We have already collected a huge quantity of data and information here at IGES. For example, we have mapped all the habitats in Wales – a massive job in its own right.
“We now want to have the capacity to implement further mapping and monitoring of habitats from both airborne and space-borne imagery.
“We have also been working in Australia with the Japanese Space Agency to carry out mapping work there, so you can see there is a global scale to our work.
“Having worked hard to collect all this data, we need to be able to process it properly and efficiently to monitor changes in eco-systems.
“Currently, we are pretty old-fashioned in the way we analyse data, having to copy large quantities of data from one computer to another.
“It can be pretty frustrating at times.
“HPC would allow us to have the computer capacity we need and it would allow us to produce multiple ‘products’ from the data we have collected.
“Quite simply, we have grown out of our current computer structure. HPC will allow us to be much more efficient in what we do and it will allow us to have better links with other institutions across the globe and, of course, better and more productive links with businesses here in Wales.”
A 3D LiDAR image of Lake Vyrnwy dam and forests.
See previous posts starting at -
http://sirgarblog.blogspot.com/2010/07/new-40m-super-computer-project-for.html
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