The African Open Science Platform ICT Infrastructure in Support of - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

The African Open Science Platform

ICT Infrastructure in Support of Data Sharing

Presented by Ina Smith

Project Manager African Open Science Platform Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf)

WACREN 2018 Conference, 15 March 2018

Data Driven World

Square Kilometre Array (SKA)

• Data collection on a massive scale
• Telescope array to consist of 250,000 radio

antennas between Australia & SA

• Investment in machine learning and artificial

intelligence software tools to enable data analysis

• 400+ engineers and technicians in

infrastructure, fibre optics, data collection

• Supercomputers to process data (IBM)
• To come: super computer 3x times power of

world’s current fastest computer (Tianhe-2) to cope with SKA data

“Construction of the SKA is due to begin in 2018 and finish sometime in the middle of the next decade. Data acquisition will begin in 2020, requiring a level of processing power and data management know-how that

• utstretches current capabilities.

Astronomers estimate that the project will generate 35,000-DVDs-worth of data every second. This is equivalent to “the whole world wide web every day,” said Fanaroff.”

H3ABioNet (H3Africa)

30 institutions, 15 African countries, 2 partners outside Africa

• African genomic research; Central node at University of

Cape Town

• Using NetMap to monitor connectivity
• Data transfer: Africa Globus Online (668,622 files transferred

between Rhodes University & UCT; 140TB data transferred from USA to SA

• Challenges: slow & unstable Internet, unreliable power

supply, continent-wide obsolete computer infrastructure that varies between medium-scale server infrastructure to a small number of workstations, with multiple operating systems, lack

• f centralized, secure data storage
• Other: database of participants (H3APRDB, REDCap), data

analysis incl. Galaxy, Job Management System, eBiokits, REDCap, WebProtege, Pipelines for data execution, data repository (European Genome-Phenome Archive)

Open Science Defined

“Open Science is the practice of science in such a way that others can collaborate and contribute, where research data, lab notes and other research processes are freely available, under terms that enable reuse, redistribution and reproduction of the research and its underlying data and methods.” - FOSTER Project, funded by the European

Commission

Benefits of open data

• Provide evidence for research conducted
• Collaboration advances science, discovery
• Predict trends & informed decisions
• Drive development, service delivery
• More entrepreneurs – using data in innovative

ways, create jobs

• Have potentially far more outcomes when
• pen, higher impact
• Democratising research & data towards

achieving 2030 Sustainable Development Goals

Open Data, Open Science & Research Lifecycle (Foster)

Original Research Data Lifecycle image from University of California, Santa Cruz http://guides.library.ucsc.edu/datamanagement/

Repositories Repositories Tools Gold/Green OA Plan

Policy & Infrastructure

“Several open science activities are underway across Africa, but a great deal will be gained if, in the context of developing inter-regional links, these activities were to be coordinated and developed through such a coordinating initiative.” - CODATA

Open Data Repositories (re3data - 16)

http://opendatabarometer.org/?_year=2016&indicator=ODB

https://index.okfn.org/place/#map

African Open Science Platform

• Platform = opportunity to engage in dialogue,

create awareness, connect all, provide continental view

• Funded by SA Dept. of Science & Technology

through National Research Foundation

• 3 years (1 Nov. 2016 – 31 Oct. 2019)
• Managed by Academy of Science of South

Africa (ASSAf)

• Through ASSAf hosting ICSU Regional Office for

Africa (ICSU ROA)

• Direction from CODATA

http://africanopenscience.org.za/

Accord on Open Data in a Big Data World

• Proposes

comprehensive set of principles

• FAIR Principles
• Values of open data in

emerging scientific culture of big data

• Need for an

international framework

• Provides framework &

plan for African data science capacity mobilization initiative

Call to Endorse

Key Stakeholders

• Global Network of Science Academies (IAP)
• International Council for Science (ICSU)
• The World Academy of Sciences (TWAS)
• Research Data Alliance (RDA)
• NRENs (Internet Service Providers for Education)
• Association of African Universities (AAU)
• Network of African Science Academies (NASAC)
• African Research Councils (incl. DIRISA, funders)
• African Universities
• African Governments
• Other

Database Experts & Initiatives

800+

Landscape Survey: Countries & Initiatives

567

Concentration of Activities

Click to view Initiatives/Country

https://www.targetmap.com/viewer.aspx?reportId=56245 Please note: this is just a preview and data still to be cleaned and updated and corrected.

AOSP Focus Areas

Policy

Infrastructure

Capacity Building Incentives

Infrastructure Framework

• Purpose: Create awareness &

guide development of a cyber- infrastructure strategy & action plan, promote policies & strategies

• NRENs – Level 6 Elaborated

Service Offering

An NREN Capability Maturity Model – Duncan Greaves (2015, Tertiary Education Network)

• Richly connected at high speed to

many other networks/resources

• Deep culture of collaboration

Proposed NREN Service Catalogue in support of Data

• Grid & cloud computing

resources/middleware – access:

• Scientific applications, complex data sets,

computing facilities

• User controlled light paths, videoconferencing,

federated identity services, security, data storage and archives, connecting e-resources e.g. electron & astronomical microscopes, medical imaging, simulators, sensor networks, accelerators, supercomputers, state-of-the-art affordable bandwidth on demand, computing power, capacity building, dedicated point-to-point Internet Protocol circuits, data storage (data centres)

• Disciplines: Engineering, IT, Economics,

Physics, Biology, Environmental Studies, Public Health, Town Planning (Smart Cities), Population Studies

• Research Areas: Climate change,

environmental impact, extreme weather events, biodiversity, food security, malaria, infectious diseases and pandemics

Data in Africa

• Tunisian Computing Centre el Khawarizmi

manages Data Centre

• Kenya Education Network (KENET) provides

access to domain names, data center, cloud computing & science gateways, capacity building, security services

• Data Intensive Research Initiative for South Africa

(DIRISA) – component of SA National Cyber- Infrastructure System

• Open Data for Africa platform (African

Development Bank (AfDB)) – to boost access to quality data for managing & monitoring development results in African countries, incl. African Action Plan 2063 & 2030 SDGs

• High Performance Computing (HPCs):

Botswana, Lesotho, Mozambique, SA, Tanzania, Zambia, Zimbabwe

• South Africa: Data Intensive Research

Cloud Infrastructure Initiatives – ARC, SADIRC, Ilifu (cloud for researchers working in astronomy and bioinformatics in Western Cape & research data management system)

Africa Data Consensus Study

• Adopted in March 2015 at High Level

Conference on Data Revolution

• Strategy for implementing data revolution in

Africa

• Plan of action to be guided by United Nations

Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), African Union Commission (AUC), African Development Bank (AfDB), supported by UN Development Programme (UNDP), UN Populations Fund (UNFPA)

• Implemented in collaboration with partner

institutions from public & private sectors, civil society organisations

• Towards strategy and action plan,

implementation plan and governance structure

• Support strategic plans on Science,

Technology, Innovation

• Guide on creating and enabling environment

to harness science, technology and innovation

• Impact socio-economic development &

industrialization

• Enhance education in developing & using

technologies

• Support collaborative research development &

innovation

SADC Cyber-Infrastructure Framework

• Cyber-infrastructure is a key driver for a

knowledge based economy

• Comprises of technologies, skills, people

and policies which support generation, analysis, transport, sharing, stewardship of information (incl. data)

• Framework provides Roadmap towards

Cyber-infrastructure Strategy

Services offered by UbuntuNet NRENs

[Source: Colin Wright SADC/ET-ST1/1/2016/11 Document]

Components

• Research and Education Networks (RENs)
• Computation resources & services (HPC etc)
• Data – tools & facilities to enable efficient

data driven discoveries, technologies, innovations

• HR-capacity development to enable:
• CI specialists to roll-out services & infrastructure
• Beneficiaries to fully benefit from CI services
• Policies to enable optimum establishment &

utilization of CI

Closing Remarks

• Exploit data for the benefit of society (Min

Naledi Pandor)

• Collaboration in research is key, based on

reliable infrastructure & high speed connectivity

• Increasing need for data gathering,

transmission, analysis on a massive scale

• Infrastructure Frameworks to be adopted,

developed in support of data sharing, research collaboration

• NRENs important key stakeholder to make

collaboration, sharing of data possible

• Build capacity within NRENs

Thank you!

Ina Smith ina@assaf.org.za

http://africanopenscience.org.za