Powering public sector innovation with ICHEC and high-performance computing
The Irish Centre for High-End Computing (ICHEC)’s Director, J-C Desplat, outlines ICHEC’s successful Public Sector Engagement Programme and reflects on the role of High-Performance Computing in addressing the challenges of Big Data and evidence-based policy making.
As the world moves forward in an era of increasing data proliferation, the computing requirements associated with processing and exploiting these data is expanding at an even faster rate. High-performance computing (HPC) is globally recognised as the key technology to deliver the scale and scope of analysis required. This symbiosis between HPC and Big Data is known as high-performance data analysis (HPDA).
HPC is all about scale and speed. It encompasses a collection of powerful hardware systems, fast networks and highly optimised parallel programming techniques to reduce time to solution by orders of magnitude. There is now widespread consensus from EU Commissioners1 to President Obama2, to EU and US Councils on Competitiveness and market intelligence firms such as IDC3 that HPC is a key technology for innovation and competitiveness. The EU describes it as a “strategic technology” that should be “put to the service of a more competitive and innovative Europe and to help address societal problems.”
The applications of HPC in public services run the gamut from high-resolution weather forecasting, to facilitating the provision and processing of satellite imagery data for use in agricultural decision support platforms, to the exploration of new official statistics that can be used to inform policy in ways unthinkable just five to 10 years ago.
ICHEC’s High Performance Pedigree
The Irish Centre for High-End Computing (ICHEC) is Ireland’s national centre for technical computing. Established in 2005 and hosted by NUI Galway (with offices in Dublin and Galway), ICHEC works with industrial and public sector partners to enable the benefits of advanced new technologies. ICHEC also provides the national HPC service to academia, delivering HPC resources, support and training to 1,133 researchers to date across the third level sector.
ICHEC’s strength resides in its ability to assemble functional teams of domain experts, technologists, software engineers and project managers. Together, they leverage the centre’s knowledge in a multi-disciplinary approach to technical computing, data management and software engineering. This approach results in thriving programmes of public sector and industrial engagement, with well-known multinational corporations such as Intel, Xilinx and DataDirect Networks, high profile energy clients such as Tullow Oil and Bord Na Móna, SMEs such as Mainstream Renewables Power, Salaso Health Solutions, and Newswhip Media and public bodies such as the Central Statistics Office (CSO), Teagasc, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and Met Éireann.
ICHEC is co-funded by the Departments of Jobs, Enterprise & Innovation and Education & Skills, as well as from industry engagement and competitive EC programmes.
Bringing Advanced Solutions to Public Sector Partners
ICHEC and Met Éireann’s well-established collaboration began in 2007 when ICHEC facilitated the migration of the computation of Met Éireann’s weather prediction model to ICHEC. Forecasting and climate codes are among the largest and most complex, making them challenging to “scale up” to deliver the necessary increase in resolution and accuracy. They also pose significant data management challenges. This collaboration has enabled Met Éireann to improve the resolution of forecasting from 15km in 2007 to 2.5km in 2013, with R&D underway to improve resolution to 0.5-1km (note that each doubling of the resolution requires a ten-fold increase in compute power). ICHEC’s research is also instrumental in informing policy. ICHEC’s Paul Nolan authored the influential EPA report on Climate Predictions for Ireland, launched on 27th November 2015.
Experience with managing large volumes of data for climate and weather modelling have led to collaborations in the area of satellite imagery provided by the European Space Agency (ESA). Since 2014, ICHEC has been archiving and developing processing capability for satellite data. Together with bodies such as Teagasc and the EPA, ICHEC are developing applications of the near real-time processing of these data, such as agricultural decision-support and flood preparedness tools. These data will be made available to Irish researchers and public bodies via a dedicated portal in 2016/17.
Another highly successful collaboration is with the Central Statistics office (CSO). The CSO through their Director General, Mr. Padraig Dalton, chair the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE), High Level Group for the Modernisation of Statistical Production and Services. To enable this work the CSO and ICHEC have formed a partnership to provide the international statistical community with a shared working environment for R&D using the latest big data and analytics technology. This shared environment, known internationally as the Irish sandbox, allows researchers from across the globe (including, the UK, Australia, Canada and Mexico) to collaborate and explore new tools and methodologies. During the pilot phase, topics have included:
• using satellite data to provide land use or population density statistics;
• using mobile phone data to obtain tourism or population statistics;
• using traffic data to provide quality of life or early indicators of economic cycle changes;
• using internet sourced data (job vacancies, house rentals, product prices) to provide statistical indicators.
The pilot phase was an enormous success, receiving an enthusiastic response from within the UNECE, and wider official statistics community including Eurostat and the World Bank. At the European level, the project will be referenced in a Deloitte report for the European Commission regarding how data analytics and big data offer strategic insight for public policy-making. The CSO work within the UNECE and collaboration with ICHEC has also resulted in their nomination in the Civil Service Excellence and Innovation Awards 2015, which “showcase innovations in policy and service delivery across the Civil Service”4. The collaboration has now moved on from the pilot phase to a sustainable subscription based funding model with even more innovative collaborations on the horizon.
Placing Ireland at the forefront of innovation
The Action Plan for jobs identified big data as a disruptive technology with the potential to deliver significant economic benefits to Ireland. As illustrated in the above examples, ICHEC is strategically placed to enable impactful partnerships between mission-driven Public Sector organisations, technologists and policy makers. The crucial role of expert technologists in exploiting disruptive technologies such as Big Data cannot be overstated. Let’s make 2016 a year of technology-fuelled innovation for Ireland.
Contact us
Professor Jean-Christophe Desplat,
ICHEC Director,
Tel: +353 (0)1 524 1608 ext. 21
Email: j-c.desplat@ichec.ie
1. http://ec.europa.eu/programmes/horizon2020/en/news/how-make-high-performance-computing-happen-europe
2. http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2015/07/29/advancing-us-leadership-high-performance-computing
3. http://www.idc.com/downloads/idc_at_sc15_final.pdf
