Pioneer: Power Generation - Creating the wave of engineers to make wind energy work
EPSRC.2009
Pioneer is a quarterly magazine. It highlights how EPSRC-funded research and training is helping to tackle global challenges and major issues facing individuals, business and the UK economy, through engaging features, personal profiles and thought-provoking opinion pieces.
Latest edition features:
• The wind energy training centre powering the quest to meet renewable targets.
• Can a new wave power device harness the power of Scotland’s seas?
• How the public helped shape nanotechnology research for healthcare.
• Energy scavenging sensors that power themselves.
• The data analysis systems that are keeping planes flying high and buses running on time.
This issue features a cover story on the wind energy training centre powering the quest to meet renewable targets and includes:
• The data analysis systems that are keeping planes flying high and buses running on time
• Power from oysters - Can a new wave power device harness the power of Scotland’s seas
• Talking nano - How the public helped shape nanotechnology research for healthcare
A Green Way? Grids and Green Computing
Climate change is one of the biggest challenges facing us in the 21st century and, across Europe, efforts are being made to cut down on energy usage and carbon emissions. How grid computing and green ICT can help us reach the EU's green targets by 2012.GridTalk.2009
Introduction:
Climate change is undoubtedly one of the grand global challenges of our time. Efforts across Europe are focused on improving energy efficiency and reducing our carbon footprint. With the EU’s 2020 target of a 20% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, there is a pressing need to take decisive action now. Technologies like grids, virtualisation, cloud computing and research harnessing Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) could go some way to reduce energy consumption and help gain a better understanding of our changing climate.
GridTalk’s GridBriefing on “A Greener Way? Grids and Green Computing” explores the current landscape of grids and Green computing with particular reference to actions undertaken by the EU to set firm aims for stakeholders and Member States in an effort to “green” ICT and other sectors of the economy. The GridBriefing looks at how ICT can be used to both enable energy efficiency improvements and energy consumption, such as providing technological solutions and measuring energy consumption.
The Briefing explains how technologies such as grid computing and virtualisation can play an important enabling role not only to increase efficiency and save costs but also as tools to calculate climate model data bringing a better scientific understanding of how climate change can be tackled on a global level.
A series of testimonials from experts and ICT providers shed light on several pressing issues, innovative research as well as business benefits to be reaped from adopting a greener approach. The GridBriefing targets a broad audience, including anyone not familiar with the subject.
The Green Data Centre: Taking the First Steps towards Green IT?
Author: Ian Osborne, Grid Computing Now! & IT-Tude.com Certified Contributor
Since the onset of worries about climate change and the increasing scientific and political convergence on the steps necessary to reduce carbon emissions to attempt to mitigate global warming, the cost of information and communication technologies has become a cause of discussion amongst the supply, user and watching communities. Much is being said and written about the apparent consumption of power/generation of emissions in data centres with estimates ranging from 2% through to 10%, and one errant data point of 34% published by Big Blue in 2006!
This document identifies some of the main principles and practical understanding of the challenges of improving data centre resource efficiency by firstly defining Green IT and then offering recommendations for data centres.
Read the full document on Green IT Data centres
Keeping an eye on flash floods: Grids & Cyclops
Optimising the Grid
EGEE. 09/2009
Introduction
This article from It-tude certified project EGEE (Enabling Grid for EsciencE), reports on new research on flash floods enabled by grid technology and particularly EGEE.
Keeping an eye on Flash Floods: The Grids & Cyclops
After the extreme European floods of 2002, which heavily affected southern France, the French government reformed and consolidated their flood warning systems. Now the European project CYber-Infrastructure for CiviL protection Operative ProcedureS (CYCLOPS) is using the Enabling Grids for E-sciencE (EGEE) Grid infrastructure to model flooding to help forecasters and authorities make decisions in emergency situations. The framework provided by CYCLOPS has been used to create a grid powered flood forecasting platform called G-ALHTAIR. By combining data of many types and sources, the software allows researchers to examine possible future flooding. Instead of running each scenario separately on their own personal computer they can use the resources provided by the Grid to examine up to 500 different hydrological situations simultaneously and examine the effect of various conditions on the potential flooding. Currently the work is focussing on the Grand Delta region, the area around the Rhone in Southern France. However Vincent Thierion from CYCLOPS, who is presenting the work as well as running a demonstration of G-ALHTAIR on the EGEE booth at the conference, is confident that the technology could be used for any area under threat from flooding. “We hope that before the end of 2009, this platform
could be tested in operational situations in the Grand Delta flood forecasting service and then extended to the other French flood forecasting service managing other kinds of flooding, like plain floods,” says Thierion. “It would then be possible to integrate more sophisticated meteorological forecasting and get the system included into a fully integrated decision making architecture.”
