NI: DEPICTION - DEveloPing an International CollaboraTIon to advance community-based, Open and FAIR eNvironmental modelling

NI：描述 - 开展国际合作以推进基于社区、开放和公平的环境建模

• 批准号: NE/X002713/1
• 负责人: Sam Harrison
• 金额: $ 10.23万
• 依托单位: UK CENTRE FOR ECOLOGY & HYDROLOGY
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2022 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=NE%2FX002713%2F1
• 关键词: NI; DEPICTION; DEveloPing; International; CollaboraTIon

Addressing the broadest and most pressing issues facing the natural world requires a holistic understanding of the complex interactions that govern it. This requires the use of models - mathematical descriptions of the world - to explain observed trends, answer "what if?" questions and predict future trajectories. As these models evolve to match our increasing understanding of the natural world, so must the research software infrastructure that underpins them. Amongst other things, this software infrastructure is responsible for helping us link models together to assess the bigger picture, promoting trust in scientific results by making model results reproducible, letting us easily use models on the latest high-performance computers, providing a consistent computational environment and access to data to help developers collaborate, and providing interactive visualisations and apps of model results to a broader audience. To use an analogy - just as analytical scientists require access to laboratories full of high-tech equipment to perform scientific experiments, computational scientists require access to virtual laboratories full of the latest software infrastructure to perform computational experiments. Software infrastructure and communities have developed to begin to meet these challenges across the globe, and partners in this project have been leading these developments for several decades. However, these software and communities are currently independent and constrained, either by geography or to particular scientific domains. The goal of this project is to unite this infrastructure around an international community of practice, providing much needed international cohesion across environment modelling software infrastructure. United, this software has the potential to be truly transformative, enabling collaborative innovation where, for example: models can be readily deployed to and dynamically linked within the cloud; physics-based, statistical and data science models can work seamlessly together to provide a step change in how realistically our models predict the natural world, and; results can be shared easily to non-developers via interactive apps. We will showcase this transformative potential through a case study, which will predict the transport of microplastics in the environment from their release, through waterways and the terrestrial environment, out to the ocean. Plastic pollution is widespread and global, with plastic debris present in all parts of the environment, from deep ocean trenches to remote mountains. It poses a potentially significant risk to both the environment and ourselves. Despite this, the modelling of microplastic transport in the environment is in its infancy, and whilst models of individual compartments (rivers, oceans) exist, there are no frameworks capable of predicting high-resolution microplastic transport from source to sea. Our case study will solve this, at the same time as demonstrating the benefits yielded by our united software infrastructure. This infrastructure will underpin the case study, providing the tools needed to link together the hydrological, microplastic transport and coastal ocean models of which it comprises, and providing a collaborative virtual environment to power it. The result will be a modelling framework that not only offers a step change in our ability to predict microplastic transport from source to sea, but that is flexible enough to be adapted to different chemical classes, thereby making a significant contribution to our efforts towards a zero pollution society. We are a new partnership who collectively unites world-leading expertise in software infrastructure development, community building, hydrology, chemical fate modelling and oceanography. All partners are committed to securing a long-term, self-sustaining collaboration that will ultimately help advance environmental modelling far beyond the scope of this project.

要解决自然界面临的最广泛和最紧迫的问题，需要对支配自然界的复杂相互作用有一个整体的了解。这需要使用模型--对世界的数学描述--来解释观察到的趋势，回答“如果呢？”提出问题并预测未来的轨迹。随着这些模型的演变，以适应我们对自然界日益增长的理解，支撑它们的研究软件基础设施也必须如此。其中，该软件基础设施负责帮助我们将模型链接在一起以评估更大的图景，通过使模型结果可重现来提高对科学结果的信任，使我们能够在最新的高性能计算机上轻松使用模型，提供一致的计算环境和数据访问以帮助开发人员协作，并向更广泛的受众提供模型结果的交互式可视化和应用程序。打个比方，就像分析科学家需要进入充满高科技设备的实验室才能进行科学实验一样，计算科学家需要进入充满最新软件基础设施的虚拟实验室来进行计算实验。软件基础设施和社区已经开始在全球范围内应对这些挑战，该项目中的合作伙伴几十年来一直在领导这些开发。然而，这些软件和社区目前是独立的，受到地理或特定科学领域的限制。该项目的目标是将这一基础设施统一在一个国际实践社区周围，在环境建模软件基础设施方面提供亟需的国际凝聚力。联合起来，这款软件具有真正变革性的潜力，能够实现协作创新，例如：模型可以轻松部署到云中并在云中动态链接；基于物理的、统计和数据科学的模型可以无缝地协同工作，从而改变我们的模型预测自然世界的真实性，以及；可以通过互动应用程序轻松地将结果分享给非开发人员。我们将通过一个案例研究来展示这种变革的潜力，该案例研究将预测微塑料在环境中的运输，从它们通过水道和陆地环境，到海洋。塑料污染是普遍的和全球性的，从深海战壕到偏远的山脉，塑料碎片存在于环境的各个部分。它对环境和我们自己都构成了潜在的重大风险。尽管如此，微塑料在环境中的传输模型还处于初级阶段，虽然存在单个隔舱(河流、海洋)的模型，但没有能够预测从源头到海洋的高分辨率微塑料传输的框架。我们的案例研究将解决这一问题，同时展示我们的联合软件基础设施所产生的好处。这一基础设施将为案例研究提供必要的工具，将其组成的水文、微塑料运输和沿海海洋模型联系起来，并为其提供一个协作的虚拟环境。其结果将是一个模型框架，它不仅使我们预测微塑料从源头到海洋的能力发生了阶段性变化，而且足够灵活，可以适应不同的化学类别，从而为我们迈向零污染社会的努力做出重大贡献。我们是一种新的合作伙伴关系，将软件基础设施开发、社区建设、水文学、化学命运建模和海洋学方面的世界领先专业知识结合在一起。所有合作伙伴都致力于确保长期的、自我维持的合作，最终将有助于推动环境建模远远超出本项目的范围。

项目成果

Computational models to confront the complex pollution footprint of plastic in the environment

• DOI: 10.1038/s43588-023-00445-y
• 发表时间: 2023-06-01
• 期刊: NATURE COMPUTATIONAL SCIENCE
• 作者: MacLeod，Matthew;Domercq，Prado;Praetorius，Antonia
• 通讯作者: Praetorius，Antonia