MX101. Mexico, United States

The US and Mexico share the world’s busiest border crossing between San Diego and Tijuana as measured by the number of people crossing the border each day in both directions. Innumerable goods and services cross the border, many coming from other countries, like the European Union and China. Communication across the border has neither shared this robustness nor has its impact been anything like that of the physical crossing of materials mostly by high-volume trucking.

The flow of information across this border can greatly enhance the scientific, cultural, and business interaction between the two countries and their partners. High-bandwidth applications that provide a model of this interaction are being developed in Mexico by CUDI and CONACYT and their university partners, and in the US by CENIC and Calit2 and their university partners.

The Baja California – Southern California region is a zone with significant annual rainfall, occasionally affected by hurricanes, where strong winds and brush fires create hazard conditions and where droughts can severely impact the local economies. As such, this scientific collaboration initiative would be of great social consequence.

Furthermore, due to the strong economic ties developed within this region, it is of the utmost importance to develop a joint critical mass on research and development that would further achieve economies of scale and better accomplishes the distribution of wealth among the two nations. We can conclude then that it is a priority to create virtual binational “collaboratories” that garner the best of the scientific computing infrastructure among our countries.

3D stereoscopic visualizations of shared terrain – used for reaction to fires, floods, and earthquakes – provide a shared regional image currency. Environmental sensing and simulation visualizations fed by real-time sensor information combined with legacy visualizations provide hybrid visualizations for situational awareness for public safety, economic effect assessment, and shared Homeland Security. Similar interactions provide shared cultural, sports, business and scientific partnerships between the two countries. These partnerships could extend out from Mexico and the US to Latin America, Asia, and Europe.

A grid formed by computer clusters running Linux at CICESE and at SDSC will run the MM5 numerical model. The PSU/NCAR mesoscale model (known as MM5) is a limited-area, nonhydrostatic, terrain-following vertical-coordinate model designed to simulate or predict mesoscale atmospheric circulation. The model is supported by several pre- and post-processing programs, which are referred to collectively as the MM5 modeling system.

We would access compute servers from PRAGMA test bed at SDSC. Hardware requirements per node are: at least 0.5 GB memory and a few GB disk space. Total memory and disk requirements would depend on the temporal, as well as spatial resolution specified at run time. The Pacific Rim Application and Grid Middleware Assembly (PRAGMA) was formed to establish sustained collaborations and advance the use of grid technologies in applications among a community of investigators working with leading institutions around the Pacific Rim

Networking and visualizations will be done through the SDSU Visualization Center, so that the connections are still up and working for the long term. Demonstration development requires daily interaction across the border to do shared tasks and visualizations. The SDSU Visualization Center can be the venue for the visualizations, but can also send them to SDSC and Calit2 when needed for iGrid visualizations.

Fiber network at higher than 34 Mbps is expected to be completed by CENIC and CUDI by summer. Fiber to CICESE in Ensenada is being requested from TelMex. iGrid may provide the impetus for this fiber to be installed. Connection to Tijuana and Mexico City, as well as more than 200+ CUDI-affiliated institutes and universities is possible, as well as to CICESE in Ensenada.