Development Of A Cloud Computing Application For Water Resources Modelling And Optimization Based On Open Source Software

Abstract

Cloud computing is the latest advancement in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) that provides computing as a service or delivers computation, software, data access, storage service without end-user knowledge of the physical location and system configuration. Cloud computing, service oriented architecture and web geographic information systems are new technologies for development of the cloud computing application for water resources modelling and optimization. The cloud application is deployed and tested in a distributed computer environment running on three virtual machines (VMs). The cloud application has five web services for: (1) spatial data infrastructure – 1 (SDI), (2) SDI – 2, (3) support for water resources modelling (4) water resources optimization and 5) user authentication. The cloud application is developed using several programming languages (PHP, Ajax, Java, and JavaScript), libraries (OpenLayers and JQuery) and open-source software components (GeoServer, PostgreSQL and PostGIS) and OGC standards (WMS, WFS and WFT-T). The web services for support of water resources modelling and user authentication are deployed on Amazon Web Services and are communicating using WFS with the two SDI web services. The two SDI web services are working on the two separate VMs providing geospatial data and services. The fourth web service is deployed on a separate VM because of the expected large computational requirements. The cloud application is scalable, interoperable, creates a real time multi-user collaboration platform. All code and components used are open source. The cloud application was tested with concurrent multiple users. The performance, security and utilization of the distributed computer environment are monitored and analysed together with the users’ experience and satisfaction. The applicability of the presented solution and its future are elaborated