A case study of Al-Karak, Jordan

Funding Information: This work was supported by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology – FCT (under PhD scholarship of Yasmine Ayed [UI/BD/150894/2021]. The authors would like to thank the Institute of Chemical and Energy Engineering, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences for providing the HOMER licence. Funding Information: This work was supported by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology – FCT (under PhD scholarship of Yasmine Ayed [ UI/BD/150894/2021 ]. The authors would like to thank the Institute of Chemical and Energy Engineering, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences for providing the HOMER licence. Publisher Copyright: © 2023 The AuthorsThe aim of this research is to examine the techno-economic viability of both off-grid and on-grid hybrid renewable energy systems for Jordan's Al-Karak governorate. Hybrid Optimization of Multiple Energy Resources (HOMER) Pro software was used in this article to evaluate the carry feasibility to maximize the renewable energy (RE) integration in hybrid energy systems based on different configurations, grid-connected and stand-alone systems of the wind turbine, biogas plant, photovoltaic (PV) panels, flywheel, and batteries while minimizing the net present cost, the Levelized cost of energy and CO2 emissions mitigation. The results showed that the PV/Wind system, connected to the grid with batteries for storage is the optimal configuration for sustainable Al-Karak governorate electrification whilst achieving environmental benefits and guaranteeing reliable and continuous energy access with the lowest net present cost and the Levelized cost, 298,359 USD$and 0.024 USD$/kWh respectively, and high RE share, 71.8% of electricity is generated from wind and 28.2% is purchased from the grid and emits 220 tons of CO2 per year, 53% less than a grid alone system. Such a system would provide advantages in terms of energy independence and improved environmental quality.publishersversionpublishe

Grid accounting for computing and storage resources towards standardization

In the last years, we have seen a growing interest of the scientific community first and commercial vendors then, in new technologies like Grid and Cloud computing. The first in particular, was born to meet the enormous computational requests mostly coming from physic experiments, especially Large Hadron Collider's (LHC) experiments at Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire (European Laboratory for Particle Physics) (CERN) in Geneva. Other scientific disciplines that are also benefiting from those technologies are biology, astronomy, earth sciences, life sciences, etc. Grid systems allow the sharing of heterogeneous computational and storage resources between different geographically distributed institutes, agencies or universities. For this purpose technologies have been developed to allow communication, authentication, storing and processing of the required software and scientific data. This allows different scientific communities the access to computational resources that a single institute could not host for logistical and cost reasons. Grid systems were not the only answer to this growing need of resources of different communities. At the same time, in the last years, we have seen the affirmation of the so called Cloud Computing. Cloud computing is a model for enabling convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g.: networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction. The use of both computational paradigms and the utilization of storage resources, leverage on different authentication and authorization tools. The utilization of those technologies requires systems for the accounting of the consumed resources. Those systems are built on the top of the existing infrastructure and they collect all the needed data related to the users, groups and resources utilized. This information is then collected in central repositories where they can be analyzed and aggregated. Open Grid Forum (OGF) is the international organism that works to develop standards in the Grid environment. Usage Record - Working Group (UR-WG) is a group, born within OGF aiming at standardizing the Usage Record (UR) structure and publication for different kinds of resources. Up to now, the emphasis has been on the accounting for computational resources. With time it came out the need to expand those concepts to other aspects and especially to a definition and implementation of a standard UR for storage accounting. Several extensions to the UR definition are proposed in this thesis and the proposed developments in this field are described. The Distributed Grid Accounting System (DGAS) has been chosen, among other tools available, as the accounting system for the Italian Grid and is also adopted in other countries such as Greece and Germany. Together with HLRmon, it offers a complete accounting system and it is the tool that has been used during the writing of the thesis at INFN-CNAF. • In Chapter 1, I will focus on the paradigm of distributed computing and the Grid infrastructure will be introduced with particular emphasis on the gLite middleware and the EGI-InSPIRE project. • In Chapter 2, I will discuss some Grid accounting systems for computational resources with particular stress for DGAS. • In Chapter 3, the cross-check monitoring system used to check the correctness of the gathered data at the INFN-CNAF's Tier1 is presented. • In Chapter 4, another important aspect on accounting, accounting for storage resources, is introduced and the definition of a standard UR for storage accounting is presented. • In Chapter 5, an implementation of a new accounting system for the storage that uses the definitions given in Chapter 4 is presented. • In Chapter 6, the focus of the thesis move on the performance and reliability tests performed on the latest development release of DGAS that implements ActiveMQ as a standard transport mechanism. • In Appendix A are collected the BASH scripts and SQL code that are part of the cross-check tool described in Chapter 3. • In Appendix B are collected the scripts used in the implementation of the accounting system described in Chapter 5. • In Appendix C are collected the scripts and configurations used for the tests of the ActiveMQ implementation of DGAS described in Chapter 6. • In Appendix D are collected the publications in which I contributed during the thesis wor

Data access and integration in the ISPIDER proteomics grid

Grid computing has great potential for supporting the integration of complex, fast changing biological data repositories to enable distributed data analysis. One scenario where Grid computing has such potential is provided by proteomics resources which are rapidly being developed with the emergence of affordable, reliable methods to study the proteome. The protein identifications arising from these methods derive from multiple repositories which need to be integrated to enable uniform access to them. A number of technologies exist which enable these resources to be accessed in a Grid environment, but the independent development of these resources means that significant data integration challenges, such as heterogeneity and schema evolution, have to be met. This paper presents an architecture which supports the combined use of Grid data access (OGSA-DAI), Grid distributed querying (OGSA-DQP) and data integration (AutoMed) software tools to support distributed data analysis. We discuss the application of this architecture for the integration of several autonomous proteomics data resources

User-oriented security supporting inter-disciplinary life science research across the grid

Understanding potential genetic factors in disease or development of personalised e-Health solutions require scientists to access a multitude of data and compute resources across the Internet from functional genomics resources through to epidemiological studies. The Grid paradigm provides a compelling model whereby seamless access to these resources can be achieved. However, the acceptance of Grid technologies in this domain by researchers and resource owners must satisfy particular constraints from this community - two of the most critical of these constraints being advanced security and usability. In this paper we show how the Internet2 Shibboleth technology combined with advanced authorisation infrastructures can help address these constraints. We demonstrate the viability of this approach through a selection of case studies across the complete life science spectrum

Towards a Swiss National Research Infrastructure

In this position paper we describe the current status and plans for a Swiss National Research Infrastructure. Swiss academic and research institutions are very autonomous. While being loosely coupled, they do not rely on any centralized management entities. Therefore, a coordinated national research infrastructure can only be established by federating the various resources available locally at the individual institutions. The Swiss Multi-Science Computing Grid and the Swiss Academic Compute Cloud projects serve already a large number of diverse user communities. These projects also allow us to test the operational setup of such a heterogeneous federated infrastructure

User oriented access to secure biomedical resources through the grid

The life science domain is typified by heterogeneous data sets that are evolving at an exponential rate. Numerous post-genomic databases and areas of post-genomic life science research have been established and are being actively explored. Whilst many of these databases are public and freely accessible, it is often the case that researchers have data that is not so freely available and access to this data needs to be strictly controlled when distributed collaborative research is undertaken. Grid technologies provide one mechanism by which access to and integration of federated data sets is possible. Combining such data access and integration technologies with fine grained security infrastructures facilitates the establishment of virtual organisations (VO). However experience has shown that the general research (non-Grid) community are not comfortable with the Grid and its associated security models based upon public key infrastructures (PKIs). The Internet2 Shibboleth technology helps to overcome this through users only having to log in to their home site to gain access to resources across a VO – or in Shibboleth terminology a federation. In this paper we outline how we have applied the combination of Grid technologies, advanced security infrastructures and the Internet2 Shibboleth technology in several biomedical projects to provide a user-oriented model for secure access to and usage of Grid resources. We believe that this model may well become the de facto mechanism for undertaking e-Research on the Grid across numerous domains including the life sciences

Grid infrastructures for secure access to and use of bioinformatics data: experiences from the BRIDGES project

The BRIDGES project was funded by the UK Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) to address the needs of cardiovascular research scientists investigating the genetic causes of hypertension as part of the Wellcome Trust funded (£4.34M) cardiovascular functional genomics (CFG) project. Security was at the heart of the BRIDGES project and an advanced data and compute grid infrastructure incorporating latest grid authorisation technologies was developed and delivered to the scientists. We outline these grid infrastructures and describe the perceived security requirements at the project start including data classifications and how these evolved throughout the lifetime of the project. The uptake and adoption of the project results are also presented along with the challenges that must be overcome to support the secure exchange of life science data sets. We also present how we will use the BRIDGES experiences in future projects at the National e-Science Centre