SA-Dutch SKA data science partnership seeks to address big data conundrum
SA-Dutch SKA data science partnership seeks to address big data conundrum 16 November 2015 The visit to South Africa by Netherlands Prime Minister Mark Rutte will include a pivotal South African-Dutch data science partnership between key institutions from both countries bringing us closer to understanding the volume of data generated by the Square Kilometre Array (SKA), which will be signed on Tuesday, 17 November 2015. This signals the unlocking of the hidden secrets in the immense amount of data generated by SKA - the world's biggest radio telescope. The agreement is part of the visit to South Africa by the Prime Minister of the Netherlands, Mr Mark Rutte, and his trade delegation of 75 companies. SKA South Africa and the University of Cape Town, through the newly established Inter-University Institute for Data Intensive Astronomy (IDIA), will sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with fellow research institutions in the Netherlands, IBM and ASTRON, to collaborate in a ground-breaking research project entitled Precursor Regional Science Data Centres for the SKA (SKA-RSDC). The MoU will be celebrated as part of 'House of the Future' – a programme of workshops, seminars, presentations and round tables with South African and Dutch stakeholders, taking place from 16 to 20 November 2015 in Turbine Hall, Johannesburg. The South Africa-Dutch agreement on data science aims to establish national and regional data centres – to tackle one of the most significant challenges presented by the SKA: how to manage, process, and make accessible the immense amount of data the telescope will generate. The data centres will provide astronomers around the world with access to the large-scale data infrastructures and associated high performance computing (HPC) needed to make sense of the data. "We assume that there will be at least two astronomy-focused sites, one each in South Africa and Netherlands," says Professor Russ Taylor, IDIA founding director and joint University of Cape Town/University of the Western Cape SKA Research Chair. "The initial focus of the centres will be to service the current and future data archiving, distribution and science exploration needs of the MeerKAT and LOFAR radio telescopes in SA and the Netherlands, respectively. The activity, combining both operational and research components, is an important step on the path towards being able to efficiently extract major science value from the massive astronomical datasets which will be collected by the SKA," says Dr Jasper Horrell, General Manager: Science Computing and Innovation at SKA South Africa. The techniques developed can, in turn, be applied in other fields such as big data analytics, high performance computing, green computing, and visualisation analytics. ENDS Enquiries Lorenzo Raynard SKA South Africa Cell: 071 454 0658 Professor Russ Taylor Director: Inter-University Institute for Data Intensive Astronomy SKA Research Chair: University of Cape Town & University of the Western Cape Cell: 060 803 9133 Email: russ@ast.uct.ac.za Professor Frikkie van Niekerk Deputy Vice-Chancellor: Research, Innovation & Technology North-West University Cell: 083 676 7236 Email: frik.vanniekerk@nwu.ac.za
Palabras clave
Países
Netherlands, South Africa