Towards spherical mesh gravity and magnetic modelling in a High Performance Computing environment  

Authors / CoAuthors

Lane, R.J.L. | Brodie, R.C. | de Hoog, M. | Navin, J.

Abstract

For the past decade, staff at Geoscience Australia (GA), Australia's Commonwealth Government geoscientific agency, have routinely performed 3D gravity and magnetic modelling as part of our geoscience investigations. For this work, we have used a number of different commercial software programs, all of which have been based on a Cartesian mesh spatial framework. These programs have come as executable files that were compiled to operate in a Windows environment on single core personal computers (PCs). In recent times, a number of factors have caused us to consider a new approach to this modelling work. The drivers for change include; 1) models with very large lateral extents where the effects of Earth curvature are a consideration, 2) a desire to ensure that the modelling of separate regions is carried out in a consistent and managed fashion, 3) migration of scientific computing to off-site High Performance Computing (HPC) facilities, and 4) development of virtual globe environments for integration and visualization of 3D spatial objects. Our response has been to do the following; 1) form a collaborative partnership with researchers at the Colorado School of Mines (CSM) and the China University of Geosciences (CUG) to develop software for spherical mesh modelling of gravity and magnetic data, 2) to ensure that we had access to the source code for any modelling software so that we could customize and compile it for the HPC environment of our choosing, 3) to learn about the different types of HPC environments, 4) to investigate which type of HPC environment would have the optimum mix of availability to us, compute resources, and architecture, and 5) to promote the in-house development of a virtual globe application that we make freely available, built on an open-source Eclipse Rich Client Platform (RCP) called `EarthSci' that in turn makes use of the NASA World Wind Software Development Kit (SDK) as the globe rendering engine.

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nonGeographicDataset

eCat Id

77391

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Keywords

• External PublicationAbstract

( Theme )

• gravity

( Theme )

• magnetics

( Theme )

• geophysics

( Theme )

• numerical modelling

Australian and New Zealand Standard Research Classification (ANZSRC)

• Earth Sciences

• Published_Internal

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2013-01-01T00:00:00

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Australian Government Security ClassificationSystem    

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Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence    

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geoscientificInformation

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