Leveraging Cloud Technology to Provide a Responsive, Reliable and Scalable Backend for the Virtual Ice Sheet Laboratory Using the Ice Sheet System Model and Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud

Abstract:

The Virtual Ice Sheet Laboratory(VISL) is a Cryosphere outreach effort by
scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory(JPL) in Pasadena, CA, Earth and Space
Research(ESR) in Seattle, WA, and the University of California at Irvine (UCI), with the
goal of providing interactive lessons for K-12 and college level students,
while conforming to STEM guidelines. At the core of VISL is the
Ice Sheet System Model(ISSM), an open-source project developed jointly
at JPL and UCI whose main purpose is to model the evolution of the polar ice
caps in Greenland and Antarctica. By using ISSM, VISL students have access to
state-of-the-art modeling software that is being used to conduct scientific
research by users all over the world. However, providing this functionality is
by no means simple. The modeling of ice sheets in response to sea and
atmospheric temperatures, among many other possible parameters, requires
significant computational resources. Furthermore, this service needs to be
responsive and capable of handling burst requests produced by classrooms of
students.

Cloud computing providers represent a burgeoning industry. With major
investments by tech giants like Amazon, Google and Microsoft, it has never been
easier or more affordable to deploy computational elements on-demand. This is
exactly what VISL needs and ISSM is capable of. Moreover, this is a promising
alternative to investing in expensive and rapidly devaluing hardware.