Kepler

The Kepler system allows scientists from multiple domains to design and execute scientific workflows. Kepler workflows model the flow of data through a series of computational steps. Scientific workflows can be used to combine data integration, analysis, and visualisation steps into larger, automated ’scientific process pipelines’ and ’grid workflows’.

Kepler can be used to simplify the tasks of changing parameters and to make the underlying computation transparent.

Activities from different facilities can be coupled and presented in a computing unit called an actor. Input/output between facilities can be passed as data between actors, similar to the Linux pipeline. In addition, visualisation packages are integrated with the I/O framework to let users view and interact with the analysis results.

Importantly, to address the needs to efficiently perform expensive computations, we couple Nimrod with Kepler (please see the separate webpage on Nimrod in this Workflow section).

RCC has invested resources and expertise to deploy the Kepler workflow engine in several high impact projects in UQ. These include support for Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network (TERN), MARXAN, and CVL Symmetric Model Creation.