OGCOGF usage in UK eSocial Science

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OGC/OGF usage in UK e-Social Science
OGF 21, Seattle, USA Paul Townend
School of Computing, University of Leeds
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Introduction

• What is e-Social Science?
• National Centre for e-Social Science
• Use of geospatial data
• Why this is important for e-Social Science
• MoSeS
• Why standards?
• Use of OGC standards
• Use of Grid standards
• OGC/OGF standards from an e-Social Science
  perspective

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What is e-Social Science

• e-Science is large scale science carried out
  through distributed global collaborations enabled
  by the Internet.
• e-Social Science is the application of e-Science
  concepts to social science problem domains. This
  uses the Internet, software tools and structured
  information for collaborative work.

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National Centre for e-Social Science

• The UK National Centre for e-Social Science
  (NCeSS) was founded by the UK Economic and Social
  Research Council (ESRC)
• It aims to investigate how Grid technology
  developed under the UK e-Science programme can
  benefit the social sciences.
• The centre consists of a coordinating Hub (Uni of
  Manchester), seven Research Nodes, and twelve
  Small Grant projects.

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Use of geospatial data

• Examples in NCeSS?

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Geospatial data in e-Social Science

• Why it is important

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Example node MoSeS

• MoSeS (Modelling and Simulation for e-Social
  Science) is a research node of NCeSS.
• MoSeS provides a suite of modeling and simulation
  tools grounded in a series of well-defined policy
  scenarios.

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Aims of MoSeS (1)

• MOSES has four high-level aims.
• 1) To create a flagship modelling and simulation
  node, in which the capabilities of Grid Computing
  are mobilised to develop tools whose power and
  flexibility surpasses existing and previous
  research outputs.
• 2) To demonstrate the applicability of
  grid-enabled modelling and simulation tools
  within a variety of substantive research and
  policy environments.

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Aims of MoSeS (2)

• MOSES has four high-level aims.
• 3) To provide a generic framework through which
  grid-enabled modelling and simulation might be
  exploited within any problem domain.
• 4) To encourage the creation of a community of
  social scientists and policy users with a shared
  interest in modelling and simulation for e-social
  science problems.

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Aims of MoSeS (3)

• There are an abundance of simulation games
  relating to people, cities and societies (past,
  present and future).
• MoSeS poses the question of what would be the
  impact of transferring these simulations into a
  real world environment.
• Supposing that computational power and data
  storage were not an issue, what would you build?

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MOSES vision
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MOSES architecture
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Screenshots
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Screenshots
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Screenshots
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Why standards?

• Preaching to the choir? I think a few paragraphs
  will do. Will add them soon.

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Use of OGC standards

• MoSeS WPS? Geolinking
• Geo-VUE
• Other UK projects

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Use of Grid standards

• MOSES is hard... SRB? Could talk about future
  WS-RF or similar for heavy computation
• Other NCeSS projects?

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OGC / OGF standards

• From an e-social science perspective, why do OGC
  and OGF need to work together...
• Examples of things that need to be done?