GEOSHARE

Hello All,

Today I'm gonna talk a little about a new idea I have recently learned. Actually, I have always tried to give you just a clue or lead to the topic which I explain. I like to let you go and dig into it by yourself. Even though I will be always glad to answer detailed questions and even to discuss over the topics presented in my blog. :)

Last week I had chance to participate at work shop held by CIMSANS (http://www.ilsi.org/ResearchFoundation/CIMSANS/Pages/HomePage.aspx) at Purdue university. It was two back to back intensive workshops for introducing a new pilot project called "GEOSHARE" to the researchers and brining some new ideas on crop modeling improvement.

GEOSHARE stands for GEOSPATIAL data hosting for discovery and decision making. Honestly I found this GEOSHARE idea really stunning. In this pilot project they have tried to provide IT

infrastructure for hosting and processing geospatial data from all over the world. Basically, they are supposed to run a huge clusters for environmental data storage and cloud computing.

GEOSHARE uses the hubzeo technology for hosting the data and providing computing power for the users. (HUBzero is a technology developed at Purdue University with NSF funds for creating dynamic websites for scientific research and educational activities.).

As one of the main outcomes of this idea, every body would be able to reproduce modeling projects done by another groups. In this first phase, there are different nodes from all over the world which they are responsible for providing the data and prepossessing tools for GEOSHARE.

But the major thing that actually attracted my attention a lot was the determination of the GEOSHARE organizers for keeping all the data and processing tools open source, which it was inspiring.

Good luck Have Fun Hamze