GISandbox: A science gateway for geospatial computing

Eric Shook; Andrea Zonca; Davide Del Vento; Jun Wang

doi:10.1145/3219104.3219150

GISandbox: A science gateway for geospatial computing

Eric Shook, Andrea Zonca, Davide Del Vento, Jun Wang

Geography, Environment and Society

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution

1 Scopus citations

Abstract

Science gateways provide easy access to domain-specific tools and data. The field of Geographic Information Science and Systems (GIS) uses myriad tools and datasets, which raises challenges in designing a science gateway to meet users' diverse research and teaching needs. We describe a new science gateway called the GISandbox that is designed meet the needs of researchers and educators leveraging geospatial computing, which is situated at the nexus of GIS and computational science. The GISandbox is built on Jupyter Notebooks to create an easy, open, and flexible platform for geospatial computing. Jupyter Notebooks is a widely used interactive computing environment running in the browser that integrates live code, narrative, equations and images. We extend the Jupyter Notebook platform to enable users to run interactive notebooks on the cloud resource Jetstream or computationally-intensive notebooks on the Bridges supercomputer located at the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center. A novel Job Management platform allows the user to easily submit a Jupyter Notebook for batch execution on Bridges (and eventually Comet), monitor the SLURM job, and retrieve output files. GISandbox Virtual Machines are created in Jetstream's Atmosphere interface and then deployed and configured using a series of Ansible scripts, which allow us to create an easily reproducible and scalable system. This paper outlines our vision for GISandbox, the current implementation, with a discussion looking toward the future and how the GISandbox could be used in other domains.

Original language	English (US)
Title of host publication	Practice and Experience in Advanced Research Computing 2018
Subtitle of host publication	Seamless Creativity, PEARC 2018
Publisher	Association for Computing Machinery
ISBN (Print)	9781450364461
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1145/3219104.3219150
State	Published - Jul 22 2018
Event	2018 Practice and Experience in Advanced Research Computing Conference: Seamless Creativity, PEARC 2018 - Pittsburgh, United States Duration: Jul 22 2017 → Jul 26 2017

Publication series

Name	ACM International Conference Proceeding Series

Other

Other	2018 Practice and Experience in Advanced Research Computing Conference: Seamless Creativity, PEARC 2018
Country/Territory	United States
City	Pittsburgh
Period	7/22/17 → 7/26/17

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
The authors would like to thank Sergiu Sanielevici and Nancy Wilkins-Diehr for their guidance during the initial formulation of the GISandbox. The authors would like to thank Mark Krenz and the Science Gateway Community Institute for his continued assistance in a cybersecurity audit as part of a Science Gateway Community Institute Incubator project. This work used the Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE), which is supported by National Science Foundation grant number ACI-1548562.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 Copyright held by the owner/author(s). Publication rights licensed to ACM.

Keywords

GIS
Geographic Information Systems
Science Gateway

Publisher link

10.1145/3219104.3219150

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GISandbox: A science gateway for geospatial computing. / Shook, Eric; Zonca, Andrea; Vento, Davide Del et al.
Practice and Experience in Advanced Research Computing 2018: Seamless Creativity, PEARC 2018. Association for Computing Machinery, 2018. a44 (ACM International Conference Proceeding Series).

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution

Shook, E, Zonca, A, Vento, DD & Wang, J 2018, GISandbox: A science gateway for geospatial computing. in Practice and Experience in Advanced Research Computing 2018: Seamless Creativity, PEARC 2018., a44, ACM International Conference Proceeding Series, Association for Computing Machinery, 2018 Practice and Experience in Advanced Research Computing Conference: Seamless Creativity, PEARC 2018, Pittsburgh, United States, 7/22/17. https://doi.org/10.1145/3219104.3219150

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abstract = "Science gateways provide easy access to domain-specific tools and data. The field of Geographic Information Science and Systems (GIS) uses myriad tools and datasets, which raises challenges in designing a science gateway to meet users' diverse research and teaching needs. We describe a new science gateway called the GISandbox that is designed meet the needs of researchers and educators leveraging geospatial computing, which is situated at the nexus of GIS and computational science. The GISandbox is built on Jupyter Notebooks to create an easy, open, and flexible platform for geospatial computing. Jupyter Notebooks is a widely used interactive computing environment running in the browser that integrates live code, narrative, equations and images. We extend the Jupyter Notebook platform to enable users to run interactive notebooks on the cloud resource Jetstream or computationally-intensive notebooks on the Bridges supercomputer located at the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center. A novel Job Management platform allows the user to easily submit a Jupyter Notebook for batch execution on Bridges (and eventually Comet), monitor the SLURM job, and retrieve output files. GISandbox Virtual Machines are created in Jetstream's Atmosphere interface and then deployed and configured using a series of Ansible scripts, which allow us to create an easily reproducible and scalable system. This paper outlines our vision for GISandbox, the current implementation, with a discussion looking toward the future and how the GISandbox could be used in other domains.",

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note = "Funding Information: The authors would like to thank Sergiu Sanielevici and Nancy Wilkins-Diehr for their guidance during the initial formulation of the GISandbox. The authors would like to thank Mark Krenz and the Science Gateway Community Institute for his continued assistance in a cybersecurity audit as part of a Science Gateway Community Institute Incubator project. This work used the Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE), which is supported by National Science Foundation grant number ACI-1548562. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2018 Copyright held by the owner/author(s). Publication rights licensed to ACM.; 2018 Practice and Experience in Advanced Research Computing Conference: Seamless Creativity, PEARC 2018 ; Conference date: 22-07-2017 Through 26-07-2017",

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ER -

GISandbox: A science gateway for geospatial computing

Abstract

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