[For those of you who are planning on deploying engineering virtual organizations, national platforms or large sensor and instruments networks this might be a useful workshop. Here are some additional pointers on instruments for the grid for those who may be interested. Thanks to Herve Guy for this pointer --BSA]
Grid enabled instruments middleware
www.inocybe.ca
NSF Engineering Virtual Organizations http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2007/nsf07558/nsf07558.htm
CANARIE's Network Enabled Platforms Workshop http://www.canarie.ca/conferences/platforms/index.html
Second International Workshop on Scientific Instruments and
Sensors on the Grid
Held in conjunction with ISSNIP 2007
Melbourne, Australia
December 3-6, 2007 http://www.issnip.org/2007/
Grids for computation and storage are mature and are key components of e-Science. Data for supporting or falsifying theories comes from experiments that involve making observations with real instruments and sensors and from simulation (in silico experiments). Efforts are currently underway to integrate instruments and sensors with computing and storage Grids to create a complete fabric for conducting e-Science, from observation to publication. The aim of this workshop is to explore the integration of instruments and sensors into computing and storage grids.
Grid-enabling instruments and sensors encompasses themes of remote access by humans and software agents, expanded availability of instruments by a broader possibly non-traditional audience, integration of instruments into software-driven analytical processes and workflows, and infrastructure for autonomic event detection and response on many scales and in many settings.
As Grids co-evolve with Web 2.0 technologies, SOA and existing Grid approaches need to be re-thought. This presents special challenges and opportunities for instruments and sensor Grids.
Many benefits accrue from sensors and instruments as grid actors. Utilization and throughput of existing facilities may be improved through remote access. Instruments can be elements in an experimental workflow involving planning, observing, analysing, discovering and publishing, and sensing and computing are brought closer together to support the coupling of
simulation and observation in real-time (e.g. nowcasting in environmental and earth sciences and structural testing in civil engineering.) In these applications the sensor network can evolve with the model supporting rapid testing and modification of theories and optimised parameterisation of models.
Beyond these high level benefits, some more mundane ones include the possibility of automatically acquiring high grade, detailed metadata with observations that can be used to diagnose problems in the instrument or experiment. High quality metadata also extends the usefulness of data, increasing the possibility of re-use in some later study. Investments in instrumentation can be made more efficiently knowing that research infrastructure could be universally accessible to the community, and that one aspect of return on investment, duty cycle or utilization, can be easily measured.
This workshop will address these issues and challenges, as they encompass both real and virtual instruments and sensors. We are soliciting papers on topics including, but not limited to, the following:
* Integration of instruments and sensors into Grids
* Protocols and service models for Grid-enabled instruments and sensors
* The role of Web 2.0 technologies and APIs in instrument-driven science
* A discussion or survey of extant models from Defence or industry that may be useful in developing a reusable approach to Grid-enabling sensor and instruments for e-Science
* Interoperability and compatibility of Grid-enabled instrumentation and applications
* Representation and control of instruments and sensors including safety issues
* Remote access to instrumentation and sensors
* Virtual organization and security issues
* Data management and metadata issues related to real-time data sources
* Social, administrative, and financial issues of Grid-enabled instruments and sensors
* Agent-based and autonomic computing for instrument and sensor networks
Organization
General Chair
Donald F. McMullen, Indiana University
Organizing/Program Committee
Kenneth Chiu, State University of New York (SUNY) at Binghamton, USA Simon Coles, University of Southampton, UK
Geoffrey Fox, Indiana University, USA
Jeremey Frey, University of Southampton, UK
Fang-Pang Lin, National Center for High-Performance Computing, Taiwan Marlon Pierce, Indiana University, USA Peter Turner, University of Sydney, Australia