High Performance Computations for Decision Support in Critical Situations: Introduction to the Third Workshop on Urgent Computing

AbstractThis paper is the preface to the Third Workshop on Urgent Computing.The Urgent Computing workshops have been traditionally embedded in frame of International Conference of Computational Science (ICCS) since 2012. They are aimed to develop a dialogue on the present and future ofresearch and applications associated with the large-scale computations for decision support in critical situations. The key workshop topics in 2014 are: methods and principles of urgent computing, middleware, platforms and infrastructures, simulation-based decision support for complex systems control, interactive visualization and virtual reality for decision support in emergency situations, domain-area applications to emergency situations, including natural and man-made disasters, e.g.transportation problems, epidemics, criminal acts, etc

Flexible And Secure Access To Computing Clusters

The investigation presented in this paper was prompted by the need to provide a manageablesolution for secure access to computing clusters with a federated authentication framework.This requirement is especially important for scientists who need direct access to computingnodes in order to run their applications (e.g. chemical or medical simulations) with proprietary,open-source or custom-developed software packages. Our existing software, whichenables non-Web clients to use Shibboleth-secured services, has been extended to providedirect SSH access to cluster nodes using the Linux Pluggable Authentication Modules mechanism.This allows Shibboleth users to run the required software on clusters. Validationand performance comparison with existing SSH authentication mechanisms confirm that thepresented tools satisfy the stated requirements

GRID RESOURCE REGISTRY – ABSTRACT LAYER FOR COMPUTATIONAL RESOURCES

The growing number of resources available to researchers in the e-Science domain has openednew possibilities for constructing complex scientific applications while at the same timeintroducing new requirements for tools which assist developers in creating such applications.This paper discusses the problems of rapid application development, the use of distributedresources and a uniform approach to resource registration, discovery and access. It presentsthe Grid Resource Registry, which delivers an abstract layer for computational resources.The Registry is a central place where developers may search for available services and fromwhich the execution engine receives technical specifications of services. The Registry is usedthroughout the lifetime of the e-science application, starting with application design, throughimplementation to execution

Towards A Novel Environment for Simulation of Quantum Computing

In this paper, we analyze existing quantum computer simulation techniques and their realizations to minimize the impact of the exponential complexity of simulated quantum computations. As a result of this investigation, we propose a quantum computer simulator with an integrated development environment – QuIDE – supporting the development of algorithms for future quantum computers. The simulator simplifies building and testing quantum circuits and understanding quantum algorithms in an efficient way. The development environment provides flexibility of source code edition and ease of the graphical building of circuit diagrams. We also describe and analyze the complexity of algorithms used for simulation as well as present performance results of the simulator as well as results of its deployment during university classes

Overhead Verification for Cryptographically Secured Transmission on the Grid

It is well known that the network protocols frequently used in Internet and Local Area Networks do not ensure the security level required for current distributed applications. This is even more crucial for the Grid environment. Therefore asymmetric cryptography algorithms have been applied in order to secure information transmitted over the network. The security level enforced by means of the algorithms is found sufficient, however it introduces additional transmission overhead. In this paper we describe experiments performed in order to evaluate transmission efficiency depending on the security level applied

Towards Exascale Computing Architecture and Its Prototype: Services and Infrastructure

This paper presents the design and implementation of a scalable compute platform for processing large data sets in the scope of the EU H2020 project PROCESS. We are presenting requirements of the platform, related works, infrastructure with focus on the compute components and finally results of our work

A Platform for Collaborative e-Science Applications

Abstract A novel, holistic, approach to scientific investigations should, besides analysis of individual phenomena, integrate different, interdisciplinary sources of knowledge about a complex system to obtain a deep understanding of the system as a whole. This innovative way of research, recently called system-level science [1], requires advanced software environments to support collaborating research groups. Most problem-solving environments and virtual laboratories In the ViroLab project The Virtual Laboratory (see The Experiment Planning Environment supports rapid experiment plan development while the Experiment Management Interface enables loading and execution of experiments. The Experiment Repository developers and published for future use. The virtual laboratory engi Operation Invoker which instantiates grid object repr operation invocations. The GridSpace Applic load balancing on computational servers. The Data Access Service remote databases located in research institutions and Fig. 1. Architecture of the Virtual Laboratory The provenance approach in the ViroLab virtual laboratory ontology-based semantic modeling, monitoring of infrastructure, and database technologies, in order to coll the execution of experiments, represent it in a meaningful way, repository. In the ViroLab project, this virtual laboratory is used to plan and virological experiments, with various types of analysis of as the calculation of drug resistance, querying historical and about experiments, a drug resistance system based on the Retrogram been applied to other application domains, such as comparison, data mining using the Weka library, series of Gaussian application on the EGEE infrastructure. computer science classes. We have developed an environment for collaborative planning, execution of e-Science applications. It facilitates fast, close cooperation and users so it may be used by groups of experts running In-silico experiments undergo frequent changes, this platform encourages quick, agile simulation software releasing

Towards a European Health Research and Innovation Cloud (HRIC)

The European Union (EU) initiative on the Digital Transformation of Health and Care (Digicare) aims to provide the conditions necessary for building a secure, flexible, and decentralized digital health infrastructure. Creating a European Health Research and Innovation Cloud (HRIC) within this environment should enable data sharing and analysis for health research across the EU, in compliance with data protection legislation while preserving the full trust of the participants. Such a HRIC should learn from and build on existing data infrastructures, integrate best practices, and focus on the concrete needs of the community in terms of technologies, governance, management, regulation, and ethics requirements. Here, we describe the vision and expected benefits of digital data sharing in health research activities and present a roadmap that fosters the opportunities while answering the challenges of implementing a HRIC. For this, we put forward five specific recommendations and action points to ensure that a European HRIC: i) is built on established standards and guidelines, providing cloud technologies through an open and decentralized infrastructure; ii) is developed and certified to the highest standards of interoperability and data security that can be trusted by all stakeholders; iii) is supported by a robust ethical and legal framework that is compliant with the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR); iv) establishes a proper environment for the training of new generations of data and medical scientists; and v) stimulates research and innovation in transnational collaborations through public and private initiatives and partnerships funded by the EU through Horizon 2020 and Horizon Europe