Technological advances in high performance computing are creating exciting new opportunities that move well beyond improving the precision of simulation models. The use of extreme computing in real-time applications with high velocity data and live analytics is within reach. The availability of fast growing social and sensor networks raise new possibilities in monitoring, assessing and predicting environmental, social and economic incidents as they happen. Add in grand challenges in data fusion, analysis and visualization, and extreme computing hardware has an increasingly essential role in enabling efficient processing workflows for huge heterogeneous data streams. VESTEC will create the software solutions needed to realise this vision for urgent decision making in various fields with high impact for the European community. VESTEC will build a flexible toolchain to combine multiple data sources, efficiently extract essential features, enable flexible scheduling and interactive supercomputing, and realise 3D visualization environments for interactive explorations by stakeholders and decision makers. VESTEC will develop and evaluate methods and interfaces to integrate high-performance data analytics processes into running simulations and real-time data environments. Interactive ensemble management will launch new simulations for new data, building up statistically more and more accurate pictures of emerging, time-critical phenomena. Innovative data compression approaches, based on topological feature extraction and data sampling, will result in considerable reductions in storage and processing demands by discarding domain-irrelevant data. Three emerging use cases will demonstrate the immense benefit for urgent decision making: wildfire monitoring and forecasting; analysis of risk associated with mosquito-borne diseases; and the effects of space weather on technical supply chains. VESTEC brings together experts in each domain to address the challenges holistically.

The landscape for High Performance Computing is changing with the proliferation of enormous volumes of data created by scientific instruments and sensors, in addition to data from simulations. This data needs to be stored, processed and analysed, and existing storage system technologies in the realm of extreme computing need to be adapted to achieve reasonable efficiency in achieving higher scientific throughput. We started on the journey to address this problem with the SAGE project. The HPC use cases and the technology ecosystem is now further evolving and there are new requirements and innovations that are brought to the forefront. It is extremely critical to address them today without “reinventing the wheel” leveraging existing initiatives and know-how to build the pieces of the Exascale puzzle as quickly and efficiently as we can. The SAGE paradigm already provides a basic framework to address the extreme scale data aspects of High Performance Computing on the path to Exascale. Sage2 (Percipient StorAGe for Exascale Data Centric Computing 2) intends to validate a next generation storage system building on top of the already existing SAGE platform to address new use case requirements in the areas of extreme scale computing scientific workflows and AI/deep learning leveraging the latest developments in storage infrastructure software and storage technology ecosystem. Sage2 aims to provide significantly enhanced scientific throughput, improved scalability, and, time & energy to solution for the use cases at scale. Sage2 will also dramatically increase the productivity of developers and users of these systems. This proposal is aligned to FETHPC-02 - 2017:part (c). Sage2 provides a highly performant and resilient, QoS capable multi tiered storage system, with data layouts across the tiers managed by the Mero Object Store, which is capable of handling in-transit/in-situ processing of data within the storage system, accessible through the Clovis API.

Bycatch, the unintentional capture of non-target marine animals during fishing, is considered one of the greatest threats to marine species globally. This threat is particularly significant for protected, endangered and threatened species (PETS), including marine mammals, seabirds, turtles and sensitive fish species, with their bycatch threatening marine ecosystem health. While bycatch of PETS is recognized as a significant issue, advances in fully understanding risks to PETS have been limited, due to current inability to effectively monitor wide ranging, highly mobile and cryptic species. There has been further lack in advancement in approaches to reduce such risks. These issues all hinder Member States ability to eliminate and significantly reduce bycatch. MarineBeacon will respond to these challenges, working across a regional seas scale to identifying where significant gaps in understanding lie, and adopt innovative approaches to produce the knowledge and tools to better understand bycatch risk and vulnerability. Next generation monitoring tools will be produced and developed to improve understanding of the distribution and abundance of PETS in addition to the levels in which they interact with fisheries. Cutting-edge mitigation tools and techniques will then be extensively tested across diverse fisheries and regions to ensure transferable outputs are generated to significantly mitigate against bycatch risk. MarineBeacon will facilitate the uptake and adoption of its targeted outputs by policy, management, and industry by adopting a stakeholder centered approach, engaging and collaborating with stakeholder throughout the project to producing best acceptable solutions. Importantly, MarineBeacon will ensure long-term applicability and impact of outputs beyond the lifetime of the project through the production of a suite of decision support tools to ensure all measures to better monitor PETS and mitigate against bycatch risk are effectively targeted.