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Hi James,<br>
This sounds like a great idea. It is also something that has been
proven possible.<br>
A program very similar to what you are describing has been set up in
Australia, called the Australian Urban Research Infrastructure
Network (AURIN). <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://aurin.org.au/">http://aurin.org.au/</a><br>
<br>
AURIN have built their workbench software upon open source, and are
moving toward open sourcing their tools as well.<br>
<br>
The challenge which is grant worthy would be to take the AURIN
framework which is based on Australian datasets and customise to be
able to work as effectively with UK datasets.<br>
<br>
I'm CCing Chris, Jack, and Stewart who are directly involved in the
AURIN program, and may have extra suggestions.<br>
<br>
<br>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 17/12/2014 11:13 pm, James Reid
wrote:<br>
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<blockquote cite="mid:5491736A.4050008@ed.ac.uk" type="cite">
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All, in the UK one of the educational funding charities is having
an open door ideas pitch where you can pitch ideas relating to
research data:<br>
<br>
<a moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="http://www.jisc.ac.uk/rd/get-involved/research-data-spring">http://www.jisc.ac.uk/rd/get-involved/research-data-spring</a><br>
<br>
I'm on the cusp of submitting an idea to this but thought Id poll
this list first to see if there's any support/ interest i.e. to
validate the notion and make sure its not just my creeping
insanity knocking! <br>
As the submitted ideas will be ranked based on votes cast I was
also trying to gauge if there would be any support for what I'm
proposing.<br>
<br>
Below is the nub of the idea. If folks think this is something
that has merit (and moreover something they might vote for) then
could you ping me a '+1' off list?<br>
<br>
Of course other ideas are also to be encouraged...<br>
<br>
cheers<br>
james<br>
<br>
<br>
Proposal Idea:<br>
<br>
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<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm" align="LEFT"><font
face="DejaVu Sans, sans-serif"><font style="font-size: 11pt"
size="3">The concept of Cloud Work Bench (CWB) is quite
simple – to provide researchers in the geospatial domain (GI
Scientists,geomaticians, GIS experts, spatial disciplines)
the tools, storage and data persistence they require to
conduct research without the need to manage the same in a
local context that can be fraught with socio-technical
barriers that impede the actual research. By streamlining
the availability and deployment of open source software
tools, by supporting auto-generated web services and using
open data, the work bench concept is geared towards removing
the barriers that are inherent in geospatial research
workflows – how to deploy the tools you want and have the
storage and data management capabilities without the
overhead of doing it all yourself. Think of it as an
academic Dropbox with additional geospatial software tools
and data thrown in...</font></font></p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm" align="LEFT"><br>
</p>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm" align="LEFT"><font
face="DejaVu Sans, sans-serif"><font style="font-size: 11pt"
size="3">Recognising the high set-up cost for researchers in
acquiring and managing both the tools and the data with
which to undertake research, CWB will on demand, instantiate
virtual machines that can be configured at initiation by the
researcher and will pre-populate their custom 'workbench'
with a selection of open source tooling and open data with
the additional assurance of resilience and persistence
provided by a University backed private cloud.</font></font></p>
<br>
<br>
<p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0cm" align="LEFT"><font
face="DejaVu Sans, sans-serif"><font style="font-size: 11pt"
size="3">We propose piloting the CWB approach within the
geospatial research community which has a well established
and broad user base across academia and industry and also
has a mature open source toolset and data stack which are
prerequisites to conducting research e.g. Open Street Map,
Ordnance Survey Open data, Postgis, Geoserver, GDAL/OGR. </font></font>
</p>
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<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
James S Reid
Geoservices,
EDINA,University of Edinburgh
t:+44 (0)131 651 1383
m:0759 5116988
"The things that pass for knowledge
I can't understand"
</pre>
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<pre wrap="">The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in
Scotland, with registration number SC005336.
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<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Cameron Shorter,
Software and Data Solutions Manager
LISAsoft
Suite 112, Jones Bay Wharf,
26 - 32 Pirrama Rd, Pyrmont NSW 2009
P +61 2 9009 5000, W <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="http://www.lisasoft.com">www.lisasoft.com</a>, F +61 2 9009 5099</pre>
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