INTER-AMERICAN WORKSHOP ON ENVIRONMENTAL DATA ACCESS

BiodiversityWorld (BDWorld) - a grid enabled virtual laboratory for biodiversity analysis

Tim Sutton


Abstract:

BiodiversityWorld (BDWorld) is a three year multi-institution collaborative project that is exploring the use of the Grid as a computational environment for analysing biodiversity problems. The project is funded by the BBSRC (Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council) in the UK. Principle collaborators are the University of Reading, University of Cardiff, University of Southampton and the Natural History Museum.

Three exemplar studies are in progress that will utilise the Grid infrastructure. These encompass Bioclimatic modelling, Biodiversity Conservation Assessment and Phylogenetic Biogeography. The software development emphasis is focused on building the computing infrastructure for this project, with emphasis on metadata, workflow management, Grid protocols and middleware. The expectation is that 'off the shelf' analytical tools and datasources will be utilised wherever possible.

The project is currently half way through its second year. To date we have defined and tested various parts of the system and are now embarking on the implementation phase, producing initial prototype workflows for each of the exemplar studies.

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