VT Technology study for CTA

General Project Information

• Leader: Claudio Vuerli, INAF, Italy.
  • Administrative support for the VT project will be provided by Richard McLennan (User Community Support Officer at EGI.eu)
  • Gergely Sipos (Technical Outreach Manager at EGI.eu) will be responsible for the delivery of technical activities from the EGI side
• Mailing List: TBC
• Status: TCB
• Start Date: TBC (duration ~6 months)
• End Date: TBC
• Meetings: see dedicated page

Motivation

The Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA ) is one of the ESFRI projects of the Astronomy & Astrophysics community. The CTA project is an initiative to build the next generation ground-based very high energy γ-ray instrument. It will serve as an open observatory to a wide astrophysics community and will provide a deep insight into the non-thermal high-energy universe. The CTA will be extremely challenging for what concerns computing and data storage resources; for this reason the use of Distributed Computing Infrastructures (DCIs) is one of the possible options that could be taken into consideration in defining and implementing the computing model of CTA. It is worth noting however that the CTA project has not taken a final decision up to now about which computing model to use. Activities in this area are currently in progress within the preparatory phase of CTA and within its partner DCIs. However the EGI grid infrastructure is already exploited by the CTA project for the production and analysis of Monte Carlo simulated data within a dedicated CTA VO. This VO is supported by about 20 computing centers in Europe. The proposed EGI VT project aims to explore and investigate potential solutions to the computing and data access issues within the computing models under investigation for the CTA observatory. In particular two technical areas will be investigated: science gateway portals and federated SSO access protocols. It is worth to underline that VT project itself and its outcome will not imply any obligation for the CTA consortium. For sure, CTA remains the key project for high-energy astrophysics in the forthcoming years with a natural aggregation capability for an entire branch of the astrophysical research; the adoption of DCIs to process data acquired through the CTA arrays could therefore be a significant step forward for the wide adoption of DCIs by the entire A&A community. In summary, the overall aim of the proposed VT project is:

“To investigate, identify and assess portal and SSO access models that may contribute to the CTA computing solutions in order to provide factually based recommendations for the way forward.” Results of this project will be shared with the principal stakeholder(s) (the CTA project).

Output

The outcomes will be delivered prior to the CTA consortium Data Management coordinator (Giovanni Lamanna) and their publication will require his approval. If the technological solutions proposed in the outcome documents meet the needs and requirements of the CTA project they will be used to achieve the scientific and technological objectives of CTA. It is expected that these outcomes will be general enough to be re-used or taken in consideration in other astroparticle and astrophysics observatory related projects.

Tasks

1. Social network between CTA members and EGI members (from EGI.eu and the NGIs) (Timeline: 0.5 months)
   • The list of CTA – EGI connections are listed on the VT project Wiki page.
   • Information about CTA members is recorded in the EGI CRM system
2. Documented CTA requirements concerning scientific gateways and an SSO system. (Timeline: 3 months)
   • Document (approved by the CTA consortium) that is publicly accessible in the EGI Document Database.
3. Most suitable solutions from EGI and its partners that are capable to address the CTA requirements. Identified gaps in the EGI science gateways and SSO offerings to address CTA requirements. (Timeline: 5 months)
   • Document (approved by the CTA consortium) that is publicly accessible in the EGI Document Database.
4. Final report that proposes a roadmap for CTA and EGI to setup scientific gateways and an SSO solution for the CTA community. (Timeline: 6 months)
   • Document (approved by the CTA consortium) that is publicly accessible in the EGI Document Database.

Members

• CNRS/IN2P3/LAPP, Annecy, France
  • Giovanni Lamanna, Nadine Neyroud, Cecile Barbier, Nukri Komin
• University of Barcelona/ICC, Barcelona, Spain
  • Ricardo Graciani
• INAF, Italy
  • Claudio Vuerli, Ugo Becciani, Alessandro Costa, Fabio Vitello

Resources

• CTA homepage

Progress

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