Objective 4: Online Analytical System

Develop an analytical framework of acoustics based on GRID technology to enable users to conduct analysis and investigate patterns in multiple sensor and historical terrestrial data.

The communication, storage, analysis and interpretation of complex signals present an unprecedented cyberinfrastructure challenge. Grid computing enables a user community to obtain relatively seamless access to a wide array of large scale computational services for solving massive computational problems and to share information with collaborators.

The LTER Grid Pilot Study was conducted by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, the LTER Network Office at the University of New Mexico, and Michigan State University to design and build a prototype grid for the ecological community.  The featured grid application, the Biophony Grid Portal, based on the acoustic research at KBS, manages acoustic data from field sensors and allows researchers to conduct a real-time digital signal processing analysis on high-performance systems via a web-based portal.  A Biophony Grid Portal application and requirements was developed based on grid architecture and design. The Biophony Grid Portal serves as a use case to illustrate the potential of near real-time automated species identification of vocal organisms as well as the specific identification of human technology which can result in disturbance of ecological integrity. The Biophony Portal GRID implementation was demonstrated at the LTER Coordinating Committee Meeting in Virginia in September, 2005 (See Figure 1).

Figure 1. Regional acoustic sensor network and analysis system for species census and biodiversity assessment.

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