Victorian Partnership for Advanced Computing

AuScope is an Australia-wide program born out of the Australian Government’s National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS) to develop and fund national scientific research infrastructure projects.

AuScope has been awarded $42.8 million in NCRIS funding over the 2007-2011 period to develop an integrated national geoscience infrastructure system featuring the world’s first continental-scale, four dimensional model.

AuScope is designed to put Australia at the forefront of geoscience research and of geoscience applications. The program aims to enhance the prosperity, sustainability and safety of Australian society through improved and sustainable discovery, development and management of Australia’s mineral and energy resources. Furthermore, the program aims to enhance Australia’s natural hazard prediction and management capabilities. AuScope’s members include the CSIRO, Geoscience Australia and fifteen universities while VPAC, NASA and a number of State and Territory Government agencies are providing resources and delivery.

Key elements of AuScope:

• Geophysical imaging
• Geochemical analysis
• Geophysical modelling
• The National Geospatial Reference System

AuScope Simulation and Modelling Victoria – Earth Modelling and Process

A key feature of AuScope will be a world-leading geoscience data network to draw together information from the national infrastructure and other sources to provide advanced simulation and computing modelling tools for geoscientists from a wide range of organisations. The data and associated products will be highly accessible to researchers, mining engineers and the public. They will be used to build an open-access, four-dimensional model of the Australian continent that will provide a journey across space and time in the nation’s geology.

VPAC, together with Monash University, have many years experience in the development of advanced computer modelling tools for Geodynamics, and form a key part of the Simulation and Modelling group, chaired by Monash University. The long-term targets of the group are (A) plate-scale modelling of fundamental geological processes including effects of sphericity, phase changes, non-linear constitutive models, melt production, history tracking, anisotropy, and (B) high resolution simulation of regional basin formation in 3D including thermal mechanical feedback, surface evolution, a range of boundary condition geometries, and isostasy/eustasy. These capabilities will allow applications such as large-scale plate modelling, stress field determination for the Australian plate, constrained plate reconstructions, and natural resource-related modelling.

The foundations of the Monash-VPAC AuScope project are the computer modelling tools developed as part of the ACcESS MNRF, such as StGermain, a computational framework for parallel computing, and Underworld, a geodynamics modelling tool built on top of StGermain. As part of AuScope, the frameworks will become not only more reliable, but better targeted to the long-term scientific research needs of Australian geophysicists. The first phase of the project has involved integrating an improved meshing technology into the stgUnderworld framework, and setting up an initial Underworld Grid computing service.

Relevant Links

• AuScope http://www.auscope.org.au
• NCRIS http://www.ncris.dest.gov.au
• AuScope Simulation & Modelling Victoria http://www.auscope.monash.edu.au
• Monash Geodynamics http://www.geodynamics.monash.edu.au
• StGermain Portalhttp://www.stgermainproject.org
• Underworld Portal http://www.mcc.monash.edu.au/Software/Underworld
  

Contact

For further information on VPAC's involvement with AuScope, please contact Steve via steve@vpac.org or phone +61 3 9925 4645.