SCEC Earthworks Science Gateway: Widening SCEC Community Access to the TeraGrid

Joanna Muench, Philip J. Maechling, Hunter Francoeur, David A. Okaya, & Yifeng Cui

Published 2006, SCEC Contribution #989

The SCEC Earthworks Science Gateway is designed to allow members of the SCEC geoscience community to perform sophisticated, computationally-intensive, geophysical research using TeraGrid resources, even if they have no prior experience with high performance computing. The SCEC Earthworks Science Gateway allows users to configure and execute earthquake wave propagation simulations using well validated geophysical models and high performance simulation software. The SCEC Earthworks system generates a series of data sets including surface seismograms and ground motion maps. It also interfaces with the Incorporated Research Institutions in Seismology (IRIS) Data Handling Interface (DHI) which provides the system with access to observed data include earthquake catalogs and seismograms.

Users access the SCEC Earthworks system through a web-based portal built using the GridSphere Portlets engine. Using a portlet-based interface, users can configure, submit, and monitor, wave propagation simulations. They can also access the resulting simulation data products. The portlets allow users to browse simulation data products, save configurations, and share simulations results with other users.

All steps in the wave propagation simulations including mesh generation, wave propagation, and post processing are run using a grid-based workflow system based on the Virtual Data System (VDS), the Pegasus meta-scheduler system, and the Globus toolkit. These workflow tools perform the backend steps of registering data with a RLS (Replica Location Service) and building, submitting, and monitoring workflows. The metadata for the resulting data products are registered within a MCS (Metadata Catalog Service).

Citation
Muench, J., Maechling, P. J., Francoeur, H., Okaya, D. A., & Cui, Y. (2006). SCEC Earthworks Science Gateway: Widening SCEC Community Access to the TeraGrid. Poster Presentation at 2006 TeraGrid Conference.