Global Ring Network for Advanced Applications Development

Project: Aviation Safety Project

Description: The goal of the NASA Aviation Safety Program (AvSP) is to "develop and demonstrate technologies that contribute to a reduction in aviation accident and fatality rates by a factor of 5 by year 2007 and by a factor of 10 by year 2022". Large volumes of flight data are collected continuously by airport flight-tracking telemetry facilities. This dataset consists of the radar tracks of all incoming and departing aircraft and could be processed to evaluate and track the engine performance of monitored aircraft. Data processing in this scenario is problematic in that it requires three basic elements: An engine simulation, high-end computing resources, and a job scheduler.

Participants: NASA Ames Research Center NASA Glenn Research Center

Sponsors: NASA AvSP Research & Technology Program NASA Base IT Research & Technology Program

Countries Involved: US

Tools: NASA Glenn Research Center has worked with NASA Ames Research Center to provide a solution to this problem by developing a job scheduler that processes large numbers of engine simulations using the Numerical Propulsion System Simulation (NPSS). Simulations are executed on the high-end computing resources made available by NASA's Information Power Grid (IPG). The IPG uses the Globus Toolkit to provide security, uniformity across all sites and resources, and control. (See "NASA Information Power Grid (IPG) Infrastructure".)

Contact: Robert Griffin