Cloud Computing - Hands on workshop

Cloud computing provides a new computing cyberinfrastructure for Earth science research, application development, and education projects. By leveraging cloud computing, the projects can be enabled with enough computing resources (that is not available previously to the public) while without having to worry about hardware maintenance and system administration. Most of all, cloud computing could reduce the project cost by charging the project only when computing is being used in a pay-as-you-go fashion. Many broad spectrum projects were conducted to investigate how cloud computing can support Earth sciences and the projects’ feedback was utilized to help build better cloud computing platform.

This workshop integrates our experiences in the projects of InterAgency GeoCloud, cloud-enable GEOSS clearinghouse, cloud-enable a spatial web portal, and the design and development of Data service through the cloud. We will cover three topics in this 1 hour and 30 minutes workshop for participants to gain a practical and in depth understanding of cloud computing for Earth sciences:

·        A 15-minute introduction to spatial cloud computing will build the common understanding of how cloud computing supports Earth sciences.

·        A 45 minutes hands-on experience will give participants the opportunity to cloud-enable an application by using a private or commercial cloud, depending on which one is available.

·        A 15 minutes presentation will introduce the research and development examples for utilizing cloud computing based on two special issues of spatial cloud computing and several communities’ practices.

·        15 minutes Q&As

The participants will a) learn fundamentals of cloud computing, b) practice how to cloud-enable a geospatial application, and c) understand the future research directions.