The NGS Roadshow Bath 2009-04-15

Geodemographic Modelling on the NGS

Andy Turner

http://www.geog.leeds.ac.uk/people/a.turner/

Presentation Outline

• Introduction• MoSeS and Geodemographics• Why NGS?• Getting started• Job submission using PBS• Job submission using P-GRADE• Further consideration

Introduction

• Who am I?• Who are you?• My introduction to e-Science and

Grid Computing

Who am I?

• Background in mathematics and geographical information systems

• Specialising in computational geography and e-Research

• Researcher– Since 1997

• Java programmer– Since 2000

Who are you?

• Anyone who does:– Geography/Humanities/Social Science

research?– Demographic research?– Modelling/Simulation work?

My introduction to e-Science and Grid Computing

• SIM-UK– March 2005

• MoSeS– July 2005

• Events and Training– Agenda Setting Workshops– UK e-Science All Hands Meeting

• e-Social Science and the evolving e-Research community– Trying to get others going, making it easy for others to catch up

and collaborate• Grid Computing

– Crossing organisational boundaries• ‘The Grid’

– Language, hype and acronym soup

MoSeS and Geodemographics

• MoSeS started as a first phase research node of NCeSS– First phase funding ended 2008– Sustained through indirect funding (collaboration)

• EUAsiaGrid• GENESIS

– Further funding being sought to develop applications and grow a user communities

• NCeSS– UK National Centre for e-Social Science

• MoSeS– Modelling and Simulation for/of/in e-Social Science

• Geodemographics– MoSeS core technical modelling work

• For supporting applications in– Transportation research– Health and social care planning– Business

» Pensions» Property markets

• Essentially three parts– Population initialisation/reconstruction based on

2001 census data– Dynamic modelling of the population

» Annual basis for 30 years– Enrichment with additional variables joined from

auxiliary data» BHPS, epidemiology

• All MoSeS code we developed is open source and Java based

• We used great tools developed by others– Netbeans– MPJ Express– Gridsphere

• We did use a variety of computational resources– We got more results thanks to NGS

• MoSeS was highly ambitious and we didn’t get as far as hoped

Why NGS?

• Resources available to me in 2006– Beowulf 30 node School of geography

machine– Spare White Rose Grid geography

allocation– NGS

• Security• Advised to be the right thing to do

Getting started

• Step 1– Get a UK e-Science certificate– Develop a computer program that you want

to run for a project• Base it on open source software

• Step 2– Get an NGS account with allocated

resources for the project• Get a small amount for testing and if it runs out

get some more

• Step 3– Check that an NGS core site has the pre-

requisite programs to run your program• For the most common languages, these exist

• Step 4– Copy your data and program to and NGS

core site• Step 5

– Grid enable your program• Have a go at submitting the job by referring to

available documentation• Turn to the NGS for help

– Don’t struggle for ages– Be good at asking for help

Job submission using PBS

• GSI-SSH– I have downloaded a client– I have my UK e-Science certificate

loaded into a browser– Let’s give it a go

Job submission using P-GRADE

• Need an account on a P-GRADE portal– I use the one supported by colleagues at the

University of Westminster– It requires that you have a certificate in a

particular format and to load this to start– It provides a more user friendly interface– It required us to wrap the pbs submission in

globus• http://ngs-portal.cpc.wmin.ac.uk/index.php/Main_Page

Further considerations

• EGEE and Virtual Organisations– Lowering the barriers even further

• How else do I use NGS– The NGS oracle database backs the NCeSS Sakai Portal

which contains numerous Worksites for my research including one of my blogs

• Like JISC the NGS is supporting us fundamentally and with services being built by the e-research community which are back ended by NGS– It may be that an increasing number of NGS users are

unaware that they are NGS users.

Blogging and feedback• I have 2 blogs:

– Daily blog hosted on the School of Geography Web Server• http://www.geog.leeds.ac.uk/people/a.turner/personal/blog/

– Events based blog hosted on the NCeSS Sakai Portal• http://portal.ncess.ac.uk/portal/site/%7Ea.g.d.turner

%40leeds.ac.uk/blog.html• I am currently considering a change and consolidation

of my blogs– Neither of my blogs are in the Web 2.0 interactive style– I had a brief foray into micro-blogging

• identi.ca @agdturner• Twitter @agdturner• Now I understand the basics I might use a proven tool like

WordPress• Please feedback/interact

Thanks and Acknowledgements• e-Research community

– NCeSS• EUAsiaGrid

– University of Manchester• Alex Voss

– University of Westminster• Gabor Terstyanszky• Tamas Kiss• Gabor Szmetanko

• NGS– University of Leeds

• Shiv Kaushal• Jason Lander

– University of Manchester• Gillian Sinclair• Mike Jones• Matt Ford

• ACET/MPJ Express developers– Aamir Shafi– Bryan Carpenter– Mark Baker

• University of Leeds– School of Geography– Centre for Computational Geography

• EC/ESRC/JISC• Organisers• You

My MoSeS Checklist

• Outputs to be made as openly available as possible

• Use appropriate standards• Automate with free and open source software.• Results to be replicable• Be open and up front about what we were trying

to do and how• Adopt best practice and learn from others in

NCeSS and think about what else they and what formed to be called the e-Research community wanted.

Reflection on MoSeS

• Never-ending story…• Too early to judge?• There are many positives:

– I have learned a great deal over the last 3 going on 4 years and found a community of collaborators that I am happy and excited to work with.

– I have developed a lot of structured information about me and my research interests.

– I have participated in lots of surveys.

Acknowledgements and Thanks

• This work was supported by the ESRC under RES-149-25-0034.

• Thanks to all involved in eResearch for your ongoing collaboration.

• Special thanks to my NCeSS and MoSeS colleagues.

• Thanks to the Oxford eResearch conference organisers.

• Thank you for listening!

MoSeS Rationale

• The idea is to provide planners, policy makers and the public with a tool to help them analyse the potential impacts and the likely effect of planning and policy changes.

• Example Application:– There may be a housing policy to do with joint

ownership, taxation and planning restriction legislation that can be developed to alleviate problems to do with lack of affordable housing and workers without precipitating a crash in the housing market and economy as a whole

– A balanced policy may be easier to develop by running a large number of simulations within a system like SimCity for real to understand the sensitivities involved

Initial Tasks

• Develop methods to generate individual human population data for the UK from 2001 UK human population census data

• Develop a Toy Model– Dynamic agent based microsimulation

modelling toolkit and apply it to simulate change in the UK

• Develop applications for– Health– Business– Transport

Challenges

• Grid enabling the data and tools• Visualisation

– Google Earth– Computer Games

• Collaboration• Retaining a problem focus• Design and Development

Generic MoSeS Approach

• MoSeS to date has approached Modelling and Simulation from a specific angle– Geographic– Demographic– Contemporary– About the UK– Targeted towards supporting a developing set of

applications• It is not a requirement to make it clear what steps

can be followed by other Social Scientists wanting to Model and Simulate something different– However, the generic work of MoSeS should be relevant

and we are working towards this

MoSeS Vision

• Suppose that computational power and data storage were not an issue what would you build?– SimCity

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SimCity

• For real on a national scale

MoSeS First Steps

• The development of a national demographic model

• The development of 3 applications– Health care– Transport– Business

• The development of a portal interface to support the development and resulting applications by providing access to the data, models and simulations and presenting information to users (application developers) in a secure way

Households

Communal Establishments

HSAR

ISAR

Aggregate HPControl Characteristics

Aggregate CEP Control Characteristics