Research Projects

Cyberinfrastructure

A priority of climate change is bridging the information gap between scientist and decision-makers to understand and assimilate complex data to evaluate strategies. Facilitating development and exchange of data among scientists from different disciplines and among various environments is a challenge and often detracts from the interpretation of data. The objective of this component is to develop a data portal and software frameworks that will support interdisciplinary climate change research via integration of data from observational networks and modeling, linking together all project groups through a user-friendly, interactive, intelligent and flexible cyberinfrastructure. This portal will sustain research, applications, and education in climate change.

The centerpiece of this project is the Nevada Climate Change portal that will provide access to all project-related data, emphasize spatial databases, facilitate data-model comparison, and serve as the main gateway to climate change information.

The database portal’s architecture will consist of:

1) A powerful web server that will provide online interface to users for
storing and retrieving data from high capacity storage units

   2) A high performance database engine which will optimize access to
      storage units, interface with the web server, and connect for
      advanced data processing with the project’s modeling cluster of
      computers

3) High capacity data storage units working in pairs for backup

Annual Report Highlights

Title: The Beta Version of the Nevada Climate Change Portal is Released.

Authors: M. McMahon, Jr., E. Fritzinger, S. Dascalu, and F. C. Harris, Jr., (University of Nevada, Reno); S.Latifi (University of Nevada, Las Vegas). {mcmahon, ericf, dascalus, fred.harris}@cse.unr.edu, and shahram.latifi@unlv.edu,

Outcome: The beta version of the Nevada Climate Change Portal – the result of two prior versions – showcases the data collection and collaborative efforts of all Nevada’s Climate Change project. The portal now contains a great deal of project information and data and is poised to integrate audience-specific content before its expected public release in August 2011.

Impact: When completed, the Nevada Climate Change Portal will be the gateway for data access of Nevada’s climate change research, and the outreach mechanism for the public in understanding climate change and how it affects them.

Project collaborators using the Nevada Climate Change Portal
(photo by M. McMahon, Jr.,mcmahon@cse.unr.edu)

This work was supported by NSF Cooperative Agreement EPS-‐0814372 to the Nevada System of Higher Education.

2009 Annual Report Highlight

Presentations

Cyberinfrastructure
Architecture and Usability Aspects of Environmental Data	Design Software Framework Prototype for Scientific Model In
Goals, Plans and Strategies of the Cyberinfrastructure Project	Networking and Computing Infrastructure in Nevada
Survey of Environmental Data Portals