Commercial Use of WS-PGRADE/gUSE

Although originally an academic and research product, the WS-PGRADE/gUSE framework is increasingly applied by commercial institutions too. Within the SCI-BUS project, several commercial gateways have been developed by various companies. WS-PGRADE/gUSE is also intensively used within another European research project, CloudSME (Cloud-based Simulation Platform for Manufacturing and Engineering). This chapter provides an overview and de-scribes in detail some commercial WS-PGRADE/gUSE based gateway implemen-tations. Two representative case studies from the SCI-BUS project, the Build and Test portal and the eDOX Archiver Gateway are introduced. An overview of WS-PGRADE/gUSE based gateways for running simulation applications in the cloud within the CloudSME project is also provided.

Enabling Scientific Workflow Sharing through Coarse-Grained Interoperability

E-scientists want to run their scientific experiments on Distributed Computing Infrastructures (DCI) to be able to access large pools of resources and services. To run experiments on these infrastructures requires specific expertise that e-scientists may not have. Workflows can hide resources and services as a virtualization layer providing a user interface that e-scientists can use. There are many workflow systems used by research communities but they are not interoperable. To learn a workflow system and create workflows in this workflow system may require significant efforts from e-scientists. Considering these efforts it is not reasonable to expect that research communities will learn new workflow systems if they want to run workflows developed in other workflow systems. The solution is to create workflow interoperability solutions to allow workflow sharing. The FP7 Sharing Interoperable Workflow for Large-Scale Scientific Simulation on Available DCIs (SHIWA) project developed two interoperability solutions to support workflow sharing: Coarse-Grained Interoperability (CGI) and Fine-Grained Interoperability (FGI). The project created the SHIWA Simulation Platform (SSP) to implement the Coarse-Grained Interoperability approach as a production-level service for research communities. The paper describes the CGI approach and how it enables sharing and combining existing workflows into complex applications and run them on Distributed Computing Infrastructures. The paper also outlines the architecture, components and usage scenarios of the simulation platform.

Analyzing and Modeling Medical Data on Distributed Computing Infrastructures

Researchers want to analyse Health Care data which may requires large pools of compute and data resources. To have them they need access to Distributed Computing Infrastructures (DCI). To use them it requires expertise which researchers may not have. Workflows can hide infrastructures. There are many workflow systems but they are not interoperable. To learn a workflow system and create workflows in a workflow system may require significant effort. Considering these efforts it is not reasonable to expect that researchers will learn new workflow systems if they want to run workflows of other workflow systems. As a result, the lack of interoperability prevents workflow sharing and a vast amount of research efforts is wasted. The FP7 Sharing Interoperable Workflow for Large-Scale Scientific Simulation on Available DCIs (SHIWA) project developed the Coarse-Grained Interoperability (CGI) to enable workflow sharing. The project created the SHIWA Simulation Platform (SSP) to support CGI as a production-level service. The paper describes how the CGI approach can be used for analysis and simulation in Health Care.

Short films about flying

Online artwork which streams web-cam images live from the Internet and re-mixes them into disjointed narrative sequences, thereby producing cinema as a 'found object' made entirely of live material streamed from the internet. ‘Short Films about Flying’ is an online film which explores how a cinematic work can be generated using live material from the internet. The work is driven by software that takes surveillance video from a live camera feed at Logan Airport, Boston, and combines this with randomly grabbed audio from the web and texts taken from websites, chat rooms, message boards etc. This results in an endless open edition of unique cinematic works in real-time. By combining the language of cinema with global real-time data technologies, this work is one of the first new media artworks to re-imagine the internet in a different sensory form as a cinematic space. ‘Short Films about Flying’ was developed over the course of a year in collaboration with Jon Thomson (Slade) to explore how the concept of the found object can be re-conceptualised as the found data stream. It has informed other research by Craighead and Thomson, such as the web project http://www.templatecinema.com, and began an examination into relationships between montage and live virtual data –an early example of which would be ‘Flat Earth’, an animated work developed for Channel 4 in 2007, with the production company Animate. This piece has been cited in discussions on new media art, as a significant example of artworks using a database as their determining structure. It was acquired for the Arts Council Collection and has continuously toured significant international venues over the last 4 years. Citations include:’ Time and Technology’ by Charlie Gere (2006); 'The Wrong Categories' by Kris Cohen (2006); 'Networked Art - Practices and Positions' edited by Tom Corby (Routledge 2005) and Grayson Perry in The Times (9.8.06).

Literature Review WM9: Part II - light goods vehicles in urban areas, carried as as part Work Module 1, Green Logistics Project

LGVs are of ever-greater importance in terms of the final delivery of many time-critical, high value goods and are also widely used in industries that provide a wide range of critical support services. There are almost five times as many LGVs as there are HGVs (goods vehicles over 3.5 tonnes gross vehicle weight) currently licensed in Britain. The LGV fleet in Britain is growing at a faster rate than the HGV fleet, and the LGV fleet travels more than twice as many vehicle kilometres each year than the total HGV fleet. LGVs perform a far greater proportion of their total distance travelled in urban areas than HGVs, and consume 25% of the total diesel and 3% of the total petrol used by all motorised road transport vehicles in Britain.

Literature Review WM9: Part I - urban freight transport, carried out as part of Work Module 1, Green Logistics Project

The review illustrates the importance of road movements in goods distribution in urban areas. It highlights the major economic, environmental and social impacts associated with this freight activity and reviews policy options available to those responsible for regulation. A wide range of possible solutions to problems posed by urban freight operations are also covered including approaches related to: consolidation, facilities, vehicle design, information capture and utilisation, and non-road modes.

Road freight transport and sustainability in Britain: 1984-2007

This report builds on a conceptual framework developed by McKinnon (2007) for analysing the performance and impacts of freight transport. This framework is used to analyse the performance of road freight transport by heavy goods vehicles (HGVs) in Britain over the period from 1984 to 2007 using data from the Continuing Survey of Road Goods Transport. The efficiency and intensity of HGV operations are assessed. The determinants that have led to the changes in HGV key variables (including length of haul, vehicle carrying capacity, lading factor, empty running) are considered. A forecast of the future level of HGV activity (in terms of vehicle kilometres travelled, fuel consumed and CO2 emissions) in 2020 is presented.

Road freight transport and sustainability in London 2005-2007

This report contains detailed analysis of road freight transport by heavy goods vehicles (HGVs) in London and its intensity and efficiency. Using a conceptual framework for analysing the performance and impacts of freight transport it presents results for road freight transport in London between 2005 and 2007.

Integrating Social Knowledge and Collaboration Tools into Dispersed Product Development

Employee collaboration and knowledge sharing is vital for manufacturing organisations wishing to be successful in an ever-changing global market place; Product Development (PD) teams, in particular, rely heavily on these activities to generate innovative designs and enhancements to existing product ranges. To this end, the purpose of this paper is to present the results of a validation study carried out during an Engineering Education Scheme project to confirm the benefits of using bespoke Web 2.0-based groupware to improve employee collaboration and knowledge sharing between dispersed PD teams. The results of a cross-sectional survey concluded that employees would welcome greater usage of social computing technologies. The study confirmed that groupware offers the potential to deliver a more effective collaborative and knowledge sharing environment with additional communication channels on offer. Furthermore, a series of recommended guidelines are presented to show how PD teams, operating in globally dispersed organisations, may use Web 2.0 tools to improve employee collaboration and knowledge sharing.