The EGEE project officially ended on the 31 March 2006
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SEE-GRID: Expanding the eInfrastructure inclusion into South-East Europe
Dr. Jorge-A. Sanchez-Papaspiliou, GRNET, GreeceAbstract
1. IntroductionGrid Infrastructures are being currently deployed in Western and Central Europe as well as other areas of the world, while the South-Eastern European (SEE) region lags behind in terms of know-how and infrastructure in order to follow this trend. SEEGRID, aims to provide the means for the region to advance towards this direction. The main objectives of the project are the deployment of a pilot infrastructure, the creation of a human network with adequate expertise, and the achievement of sustainable development of the region in the Grid area. This paper presents the overview of the SEEGRID project, and further briefly summarizes its key technical aspects, in terms of target middleware, resources and applications to be deployed so as to aid the participation of the region in worldwide Grid efforts.
2. SEE, the Grid and SEE-GRIDGradual deployment of broadband networks throughout the research community, combined with the fact that network capacity grows with a greater rate than CPU power and storage capacity, have contributed to the creation of a distributed environment for sharing resources known as the .Grid paradigm.. This integrated networking and middleware environment is also referred to as .eInfrastructure. (Figure 1). The technologies of the Grid-enabled eInfrastructure, which are being developed around the world, allow new approaches to global collaborative research - referred to as .e- Science.
A number of research initiatives in Europe and worldwide are creating pilot implementations and collaborative models for the use of computing and data resources across technological, administrative and national domains. On the other hand, the current infrastructure in South-Eastern Europe lacks the technology and the know-how needed to be part of and exploit the current trends in Grid research and development. SEE-GRID aims to provide specific support actions to assist the participation of the SE European states in the pan-European and worldwide Grid initiatives. The SEE-GRID vision is to pave the way towards the provision of a location transparent, round-the-clock common market of computing resources to the distributed research communities in the region. The integration of the regional infrastructure in international Grid initiatives will translate into benefits for the smaller, less-well resourced sites in SEE to access computing power that would otherwise be unaffordable. In this perspective, the SEE-GRID initiative will ease the digital divide and release the scientific and productive talents of the region, thus allow equal participation of the targeted countries in pan- European Grid efforts in the immediate future.
3. SEE-GRID impactThe major thrust of the project will be the strengthening of the bonds among the scientific communities of SE Europe and the overall European research initiatives in the fields of HPC, storage and application sharing over high bandwidth networks, towards a unified distributed eScience platform.
Apart from human networking activities and dissemination of European experience, the project will provide a proof of concept pilot grid infrastructure to serve selected applications, with emphasis on those of particular importance to the region (e.g. earthquake prediction, water resource management, weather forecasting, virtual teaching /laboratory environments.
The rather modest physical infrastructure requirements of the Grid, with its intrinsic geographical dispersion and high degree of scalability, coupled with the scientific talents of a traditionally rich intellectual human potential, is triggering a set of initial Grid test-beds in SE Europe. Some of these are already organised in National Grid Initiatives (NGIs), following the example of the successful development of National Research and Education Networks. Following the GEANT.NREN.SEEREN developments, the circumstances are ripe for the inclusion of SE Europe to European Grid efforts, thus bypassing the digital divide in research efforts that were so far centred in the more economically-developed regions of the continent. The key effort on the European level is that of EGEE, Enabling Grids for e-Science in Europe. The SEE-GRID consortium will strive to follow the EGEE developments closely and draw experience from those developments.
BiographyDr. Jorge-A. Sanchez-Papaspiliou received the Dipl.-Ing. and the Dr.-Ing. degrees in Electrical and Computer Engineering from NTUA in 1992 an 1996 respectively and the Master's Certification in Program/Project Management from the Stevens Institute of Technology in 2000. >From 1992 to 1995, he was with the Telecoms Laboratory of NTUA and, from 1994 to 1996, with the Institute of Communications Systems and Computers (ICSC). >From 1996 to 1998 he was a Scientific Consultant to Bell Laboratories, Advanced Communication Technology Center of Excellence in New Jersey and from 1998 to 2000 he was a System Architect in the Forward Looking Work EMEA Dept. of Lucent Technologies in the Netherlands. From January 2001 to July 2002 he supervised the Communications Systems & Technology Group of Bell Labs Advanced Technologies EMEA. He joined GRNET on July 2002 with major responsibility for the development of regional innovation infrastructures. Jorge has served as an expert/consultant for the EC, EICTA, various telecoms companies, and venture capital groups. He is a member of IEEE, FITCE, PMI, TEE. He represents GRNET in TERENA and CEENet. He has received several national and international awards for academic achievement while studying and working in the industry. He has more than 30 articles in worldwide recognized journals and conferences. He has participated, apart from industrial projects, in various positions in several RACE, ACTS, ESPRIT and IST projects: BRAVE, MANTIS, ICM, IDSM, TOMQAT, InfoGate, NOTE, BC3, PRO3, ADAMAS, WINMAN, SEEREN. He is currently the SEEREN and SEE-GRID Project Coordinator.