IN13B-1841
WMT: The CSDMS Web Modeling Tool

Monday, 14 December 2015
Poster Hall (Moscone South)
Mark Piper1, Eric W.H. Hutton2, Irina Overeem2 and James P Syvitski3, (1)University of Colorado at Boulder, Boulder, CO, United States, (2)Community Surface Dynamics Modeling System, Boulder, CO, United States, (3)University of Colorado at Boulder, CSDMS/INSTAAR, Boulder, CO, United States
Abstract:
The Community Surface Dynamics Modeling System (CSDMS) has a mission to enable model use and development for research in earth surface processes. CSDMS strives to expand the use of quantitative modeling techniques, promotes best practices in coding, and advocates for the use of open-source software.

To streamline and standardize access to models, CSDMS has developed the Web Modeling Tool (WMT), a RESTful web application with a client-side graphical interface and a server-side database and API that allows users to build coupled surface dynamics models in a web browser on a personal computer or a mobile device, and run them in a high-performance computing (HPC) environment.

With WMT, users can:

  • Design a model from a set of components
  • Edit component parameters
  • Save models to a web-accessible server
  • Share saved models with the community
  • Submit runs to an HPC system
  • Download simulation results

The WMT client is an Ajax application written in Java with GWT, which allows developers to employ object-oriented design principles and development tools such as Ant, Eclipse and JUnit. For deployment on the web, the GWT compiler translates Java code to optimized and obfuscated JavaScript. The WMT client is supported on Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and Internet Explorer.

The WMT server, written in Python and SQLite, is a layered system, with each layer exposing a web service API:

  • wmt-db: database of component, model, and simulation metadata and output
  • wmt-api: configure and connect components
  • wmt-exe: launch simulations on remote execution servers

The database server provides, as JSON-encoded messages, the metadata for users to couple model components, including descriptions of component exchange items, uses and provides ports, and input parameters. Execution servers are network-accessible computational resources, ranging from HPC systems to desktop computers, containing the CSDMS software stack for running a simulation. Once a simulation completes, its output, in NetCDF, is packaged and uploaded to a data server where it is stored and from which a user can download it as a single compressed archive file.

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