Desert Research Institute Utilizing IBM Big Data Analytics

The
Nevada Governor’s Office of Economic Development (GOED) and the Desert Research Institute (DRI) in Reno announced
they are partnering with IBM Corporation to
use big data analytics and advanced research applications in the state’s higher
education system.

This will serve as a basis for a new public and private sector collaboration
that will drive overall workforce and economic development across the Silver
State.

DRI’s environmental research
scientists are using IBM’s PureSystems family of expert integrated systems;
which includes the PureFlex infrastructure system, the PureApplication platform
system and the PureData system to analyze, visualize and model environmental
data. The goal of this collaboration is to improve upon scientific research
capabilities in fields ranging from hydrology and water efficiency to
atmospheric physics, archaeology and renewable energy.

"From
climate modeling to real-time water quality monitoring and airborne infection
forecasting, IBM PureSystems will not only dramatically change the way data is
managed and examined, it will offer a significant shift in the higher education
business model," said Thomas Jackman, Ph.D., interim senior director
of DRI’s CAVCaM. "Through
implementation of the IBM PureSystems technology and cloud-based services in a
research environment, across multiple campuses, institutions such as DRI will
be able to better achieve research goals and provide data-driven engineering
services to support business and industry needs."

Nevada’s GOED also has plans to broaden the
scope of impact through the creation of a Center of Excellence (COE) that will
serve as a collaborative innovation center between public and private sector
entities who work together addressing real world social, economic, educational
and environmental challenges.

Employing advanced technologies, a shared
infrastructure and a common set of resources, the COE delivers shared services based on big data and a variety of analytics capabilities. The
planned center will be available to Nevada’s researchers, government agencies,
faculty, students and businesses. Operationally, the COE provides an education
continuum and technology skills transfer with the strength to spin off new
business ventures in key areas such as water and aridity, national defense and
security, alternative energy, and cyber-physical security.

Creating Business and Research
Opportunities
Through Improved Data Performance
DRI serves as Nevada’s global laboratory,
investigating the effects of natural and human-induced environmental change and
advancing environmental technologies aimed at assessing a changing planet.

DRI scientists and engineers have generated
technologies for applications such as energy use monitoring in homes and
businesses, measuring windblown dust emissions and ultra-fine particles,
quantifying light scattering from large particles in the atmosphere, measuring
particulate pollution and other sources of black-carbon emissions from power
plants and diesel exhaust emissions in urban areas, modeling wind flow over
complex terrain, and improved detection of icing conditions on airplane wings.

Scientific research and engineering
initiatives require rapid and consistent application deployments with high
levels of accuracy and performance. Utilizing software patterns, which provide
a simple way to deploy and manage solutions, the Nevada System of Higher
Education (NSHE) can create, manage and scale new complex research
environments to support its research mission, without requiring additional IT
resources.

PureSystems technology allows DRI to improve
performance of data and compute intensive analytics to assist in further
commercialization and application of science in real world scenarios. This
technology in combination with DRI’s Virtual Reality Laboratory allows
scientists and engineers to analyze and visualize large data sets in real-time.
Examples include the simulation of emergency preparedness scenarios, such as
fighting wild land fires and other situations that will reduce risk and provide
resilience toward natural disasters and climate change.

"The
IBM PureSystems technology offers research institutions, such as DRI,
simplified administration and management through a single pane of glass,"
said Jason McGee, distinguished engineer, chief architect PureSystems, IBM.
"PureSystems simplifies the entire
IT project lifecycle from design and deployment to management and maintenance
for organizations like DRI with the goal of reducing life cycle time, cost and
risk. PureSystems is designed to deliver innovations that transform the
management of IT in the data center, while also providing an infrastructure in
support of our Smarter Analytics solutions."

Integrated
Storage, Networking,
Virtualization and Management
With its ability to support
strategies in compute-intensive environments, DRI can apply PureSystems as a
core component of its economic development strategy. Bringing simplicity to
complex technology environments, PureSystems integrates computing, networking
and storage into a single, automated, simple-to-use system with
integrated management.

DRI is simultaneously evaluating PureFlex System, an integrated infrastructure system that combines compute,
storage, networking, virtualization and management; PureApplication System, an integrated application platform with IBM middleware; and PureData System for
transactions, optimized for delivering data services.

DRI faculty and students applied PureFlex System and PureApplication System in a centralized method, serving
commonly used research software such as MatLab and ESRI technologies. DRI has
more than 150 researchers, post-doctoral positions and graduate students, all
with multiple workstations, across two campuses in Las Vegas and Reno.

DRI, the nonprofit research campus of the
Nevada System of Higher Education, strives to be the world leader in
environmental sciences through the application of knowledge and technologies to
improve people’s lives throughout Nevada and the world.

Made in IBM Labs, IBM’s expert integrated
systems family – PureSystems – is the result of $2 billion in R&D and
acquisitions over four years, a move by IBM to integrate all IT
elements, both physical and virtual.