Strategic Roadmap discussion paper: call for comments
The 2011 Strategic Roadmap for Australian Research Infrastructure Discussion Paper has been released for comment at: http://www.innovation.gov.au/Science/ResearchInfrastructure/Documents/Indicative2011RoadmapTimeline.pdf
The Strategic Roadmap for Australian Research Infrastructure will be developed through 2011 to inform future decisions on where research infrastructure investments will be made over the next five to ten years.
The Roadmap aims to consider new and emerging areas of research which may require different types of infrastructure in the future, and determine whether the current mix of Capability areas continues to meet researchers’ needs.
Responses to the discussion paper should be sent to Roadmap201(at)innovation.gov.au by COB Wednesday, 4 May 2011.
More information can be found at: http://www.innovation.gov.au/SCIENCE/RESEARCHINFRASTRUCTURE/Pages/default.aspx.
HPC resource allocation released
The distribution of HPC resources has been agreed for the next six months. Resource allocations can be viewed here: http://www.intersect.org.au/docs/RACMar2011-xls.pdf
The NCI facility was over requested by 91 per cent, and over allocated by 16 per cent. McLaren was over requested by 122 per cent and over allocated by 45 per cent.
Intersect will continue to monitor usage on both McLaren and NCI’s Vayu, while retaining flexibility to accommodate small start up grants between rounds.
DECCW project enters new phase
Intersect has moved from business analysis to the delivery phase on a project to build the NSW Department of Environment, Climate Change and Water’s (DECCW) data management capability.
DECCW’s Natural Resources Monitoring, Evaluation and Reporting (MER) strategy is focused on improving information flow between local, regional, state and national data managers to support natural resource management decisions in NSW.
Intersect is assisting DECCW by working collaboratively with existing users to generate the best solutions for four key deliverables: expanded corporate storage, file-naming conventions, standard project structures, and data capture and discovery services.
This will deliver a range of benefits: making it easier to store and find data; promoting dataset discovery and reuse; and enabling collaboration between scientists.
MeCAT out of the bag
The MeCAT project is part of a broader initiative involving the Australian Synchotron, VeRSI and Intersect. The project is in the process of developing a metadata database and search service to the neutron beam science community.
The Bragg Institute at the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) operates a number of neutron beamline instruments used to measure and study neutron scattering from various samples. ANSTO provides a data repository, metadata database and data transfer services. The ultimate aim is to enhance and combine these services into a collaboration environment to allow project teams to interact with the instruments, data and each other.
To enable greater management of data by researchers, and subsequent reuse by the broader research community, the metadata will be harvested by the Australian National Data Service (ANDS) and published in the Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC).
Australasian Digital Humanities Association forms
A workshop facilitated by the Australian Academy of the Humanities has led to the formation of an interim committee with the task of establishing an Australasian digital humanities association. The association will act as a formal lobby group to advance the Digital Humanities. For more information contact Paul Arthur at paul.arthur(at)anu.edu.au or email the Academy of the Humanities secretariat at enquiries(at)humanities.org.au