Real-time storm surge ensemble modeling in a grid environment

Natural disasters such as hurricanes heavily impact the US East and Gulf coasts. This creates the need for large scale modeling in the areas of meteorology and ocean sciences, coupled with an integrated environment for analysis and information dissemination. In turn, this means there is an increased need for large-scale distributed high performance resources and data environments. In this paper, we describe a framework that allows a storm surge model-ADCIRC to be run in a distributed Grid environment. This framework was developed as a component of the Southeastern Universities Research Association’s (SURA) Southeastern Coastal Ocean Observing and Prediction (SCOOP) program. SCOOP is creating an open-access grid environment for the southeastern coastal zone to help integrate regional coastal observing and modeling systems. Specifically this paper describes a set of techniques used for resource selection and fault tolerance in a highly variable ad-hoc Grid environment. The framework integrates domain-specific tools and standard Grid and portal tools to provide an integrated environment for forecasting and information dissemination.