Spring 2010 Newsletter

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Spring 2010

Message from the Director During the past decade, cyberinfrastructure (frequently referred to as “CI”) has been the fastest growing component of the National Science Foundation (NSF) and now surpasses other fashionable research areas such as nano-technology. This is not science fiction of the future but is the essential infrastructure for the knowledge economy that is vital to the educational quality and economic development of Idaho. In an open letter to the scientific community on March 1, the NSF Office of Cyberinfrastructure stated:

been possible otherwise. The challenge of CI is to integrate relevant and often disparate resources to provide a useful, usable, and enabling framework for research and discovery. CI is characterized by broad access and “end-to-end” coordination. Example components of CI include unique shared experimental facilities, networks of sensor devices, tele-participation and tele-operation tools, data/metadata storage and curation, computational models, data mining tools, and high speed computer networks.

Simulation supported by high-performance computing infrastructures has become the third pillar of science complementary to experimentation and modeling. Major challenges of the 21st century such as climate change, energy, water, environment, or natural disasters can be addressed by high performance numerical and symbolic simulations that are both data and computer intensive.

Why should Idaho be concerned with CI? First, there will be severe consequences to Idaho’s ability to compete in the knowledge economy if we fall behind in this cyber-revolution. Failure to invest in CI will limit Idaho researchers’ ability to lead in many of the upcoming major scientific initiatives, and we will be relegated to minor single-investigator roles. The groups able to access and contribute to national scientific networks will dominate. Fortunately the vital role of CI is recognized in Idaho from the Governor’s office (the Idaho Education Network), to the Idaho Regional Optical Network (IRON), to state agencies and our universities. The Idaho National Laboratory is also playing a major role in supporting the planning and implementation of a competitive CI framework.

CI is much more than just high-speed computing. One definition is that CI is the coordinated collection of software, hardware and other information technologies, as well as human expertise, required to support current and future discoveries in science and engineering that would not have

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Why Cyberinfrastructure? If we gather enough information, we ought to be able to understand complex issues such as climate change—right? Not if that information is collected and stored using so many incompatible methods that it is nearly impossible to synthesize and analyze. Two Idaho EPSCoR-supported projects offer a remedy. The Interactive Numeric & Spatial Information Data Engine (INSIDE Idaho) and the Hydrologic Information System (HIS) each coordinate data sharing and access to a vast amount of geospatial and hydrologic data that are fundamental as Idaho expands its research capacity. INSIDE Idaho, operated through the University of Idaho, is a web-based system that organizes geospatial data, remotelysensed data, and other spatial information about Idaho and makes it usable for researchers and the general public. INSIDE Idaho began in 1999, and by 2002 it was recognized by the

www.insideidaho.org

Idaho Geospatial Committee (IGC) as the state’s official clearinghouse for computerized geographic information. Idaho EPSCoR has invested funds for the hardware, software, and information technology experts necessary to upgrade continued on page 2

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