JISC

JISC and the Engineering and Physical Science Research Council (EPSRC) have undertaken to fund projects to progress the development of a Semantic Grid and Autonomic Computing. Research-focused projects have been funded by the EPSRC, see full details of these projects on the EPSRC website.

Development projects funded by JISC

Context for Developing a Semantic Grid

Lying at the core of scientific development is the discovery of new knowledge. The rapid increase in the volume and variety of data inherent within e-Science and mirrored by e-Commerce and e-Government means that any supporting infrastructure must provide a set of semantic services. These core services must be able to equip data with meaning and generate a surrounding semantic context in which data can be meaningfully interpreted. Fundamental research on knowledge systems and services is needed to allow us to move from the current data centric view supporting the grid to a semantic grid with a powerful set of knowledge services.

Projects funded in this area are:

• CO-ODE (Collaborative Open Ontology Development Environment) lead by the University of Manchester
• e-Bank UK by UKOLN at the University of Bath

Knowledge Management

In recognition of the evolving area of semantic and knowledge management services, the JISC Support of Research committee (JCSR) has recently funded a 'road map analysis' of current and novel practices, particularly arising from the eScience and digital library communities in the use of KM tools. Further information can be found under the  Knowlege Management Roadmap.

Context for Autonomic Computing

Autonomic computing embraces the concept of self-configuring systems that are able to act autonomously and adapt to changes in application or user needs. The future of e-science depends on this concept, and demonstrates a clear need for open digital infrastructure that is able to handle rapid and potentially radical changes with minimum systems administration. Key challenges include:

• new models and metaphors to allow semi-autonomous systems to be managed through a combination of specified policies, negotiated agreements between users, services, software agents and regulatory structures
• techniques to allow interoperability across and between different autonomous domains and to reason about the combination of different domains
• techniques to model and measure performance and ensure quality of services when they depend on autonomic computational structures
• techniques to capture and represent context relating to location, device capabilities, history of the computation, user activity, ambient environment and to build applications which can automatically adapt to their context

Projects funded in this area are:

• Dynamic Configuration of Grid Fabrics for OGSA Services lead by the University of Edinburgh. 

JCSR has also funded three supporting demonstrators, designed to explore the links between e-science and e-learning in the classroom. The demonstrators will give school students the opportunity to:

•  use professional class telescopes within the classroom (e-STAR for e-learning)
•  undertake complex analysis of chemical compounds (The Schools Malaria Project)
•  access and analyse pollution monitoring data (e-Environment Learning Facility for Schools)

The successful outcomes of the demonstrators have been captured in the  eScience in Education initiative.

This strand is associated with the Support for eResearch programme and the Virtual Research Environment programme. 

Events

Joint programme meeting July 2004, Brighton