Enabling Hawaii to COMPETE: Seizing the Opportunity for Equitable Connectivity

该奖项是根据2009年美国复苏和再投资法案（公法111-5）资助的。该项目的核心部分是在连接夏威夷和美国大陆的新亚洲美洲网关（AAG）电缆上获得一对每秒10千兆比特的光网络电路。在夏威夷的末端，这些电路将从瓦胡岛的AAG电缆着陆点连接到夏威夷研究和教育网络。从加利福尼亚州莫罗湾的大陆着陆点开始，AAG电路将连接到加利福尼亚州教育网络倡议公司（CENIC）在洛杉矶的太平洋波设施和太平洋西北GigaPOP （PNWGP）在西雅图的太平洋波设施。西雅图和洛杉矶是美国和国际主要研究和教育网络的对等点。这个不可剥夺使用权（IRU）的集合将在夏威夷研究和教育网络、美国主要的研究和教育网络（如Internet2和National Lambda Rail）以及环太平洋国家的国际网络之间提供20Gbps的连接。它将支持夏威夷参与支持科学和工程研究的主要国际网络项目，以及夏威夷的研究人员和设施与美国大陆的研究人员和设施之间的数据密集型合作。后者包括利用莫纳克亚山上的设施进行的一些目前和计划中的天文活动。网络基础设施的本质往往是，它不仅为研究某一类研究项目的一小群研究人员提供了研究机会，而且还提高了跨多个学科的研究效率。以下是从提案中总结出来的一些研究活动的例子，这些活动将受益于该项目将产生的连通性。地球物理学：地幔的全球尺度对流及其相关的火山学是一个复杂的、多尺度的现象，它必须考虑到与构造板块相关的上边界应力、物质性质的巨大差异（例如，液态岩浆到韧性固体岩石到脆性冷岩石）、非常大范围的动态长度尺度和相位变化。夏威夷大学的研究人员使用复杂的数据密集型数值模拟来研究地幔对流，这需要高带宽访问国家超级计算机中心。天文学：莫纳克亚山有13台望远镜，由来自11个国家的天文学家操作，包括光学、红外、亚毫米和射电天文设施。这些资源被美国大陆和世界各地的天文学家用于以发现为导向的天文学研究。一代又一代的望远镜产生了越来越多的数字图像，其中大部分是远程分析的。通过减少个别研究人员亲自前往望远镜的需要，全球研究和教育网络上的远程观测将使科学家们更加富有成效。此外，提出的先进连接将使“虚拟观测站的发展成为可能，这些观测站整合了来自不同仪器的数据，从而比任何单一实验都能获得更大的洞察力。”环境科学：凭借其独特的生态系统、地质和海洋中部环境，夏威夷是许多环境研究活动的所在地，这些活动加在一起，产生并维护了各种环境科学数据库。拟议的网络连接将为夏威夷以外的研究人员提供更好的访问这些数据的途径，这些数据对许多不同环境科学领域的研究非常重要。高端计算：夏威夷大学的科学和工程教员在许多研究领域大量使用高端计算。由美国国家科学基金会和能源部科学办公室提供的面向开放科学的国家高端计算基础设施位于美国大陆。随着时间的推移，这类研究的数据密集程度越来越高，凸显了夏威夷和大陆之间需要更高带宽的网络连接，以支持越来越大的输入和输出数据集的传输，以及使用交互式可视化和计算导向。合作研究：除了上面的一些例子，夏威夷大学的研究人员在许多研究合作中发挥着重要作用。一个例子是微生物海洋学科学技术中心——研究和教育（C-MORE）。它由六个合作机构组成（夏威夷大学和大陆的五个），合作研究海洋微生物学，包括海洋微生物生物地球化学-能量网。使用的工具之一是OptiPortal，这是一个带宽消耗大、先进的可视化和协作工具，通过将来自机构合作伙伴的各种数据集汇集到一个“画布”上进行分析，将扩大对海洋生物地球化学循环的理解。该项目更广泛的影响包括为科学和工程领域的研究和教育提供基础设施，在美国和国际上都有影响。例如，增强的连通性不仅会促进美国的研究，还会加强世界上许多国家的天文学研究。拟议的基础设施为更紧密地整合研究和教育提供了机会。NSF在网络增强教育工具上的投资已经产生了多种在线使用的教育工具。夏威夷的250多所公立学校和高等教育校园能够利用拟议的网络连接，这将使这些在美国各地托管的教育工具更容易用于夏威夷本身的教育。例子包括学术开放课件联盟的资源。联邦机构和联邦资助的项目也在网上提供了大量的数据，这些数据成为研究和学习的素材。联邦政府支持的对当代研究至关重要的在线数据收集涵盖了广泛的领域，包括GenBank、蛋白质数据库、Entrez跨数据库搜索引擎、地球科学信息合作伙伴联盟的环境科学数据、地球系统网格的气候模型输出、国家大气研究中心的研究数据档案、斯隆数字巡天、哈勃太空望远镜科学数据档案、以及大型强子对撞机的输出。夏威夷大学系统的校园是夏威夷土著服务机构。他们还为来自其他太平洋岛民的传统服务不足的社区提供广泛的服务。通过参与利用拟议联系的研究活动，来自这些社区的学生将有更多的研究培训机会。通过访问夏威夷的研究和教育网站，拟议中的连接还将为美国大陆学生提供更多了解夏威夷科学和文化的机会。

This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009(Public Law 111-5).The central component of this project is the acquisition of a pair of 10 Gigabit per second optical network circuits on the new Asia America Gateway (AAG) cable connecting Hawaii and the U.S. mainland. At the Hawaii end, these circuits will be connected from the AAG cable landing site on Oahu to the Hawaii Research and Education Network. From the mainland landing site at Morro Bay, California, the AAG circuits will be connected to the Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California's (CENIC's) Pacific Wave facility in Los Angeles and to Pacific NorthWest GigaPOP's (PNWGP's) Pacific Wave facility in Seattle. The Seattle and Los Angeles locations are peering points for major U.S. and international research and education networks. This collection of Indefeasible Rights of Use (IRU) will provide 20Gbps of connectivity between the Hawaii Research and Education Network, major U.S. research and education networks, such as Internet2 and National Lambda Rail, and international networks in countries around the Pacific Rim. It will support Hawaii's participation in major international network projects supporting science and engineering research, as well as data-intensive collaborations between researchers and facilities on Hawaii and researchers and facilities in the continental United States. The latter include a number of current and planned astronomical activities using facilities on Mauna Kea. It is often the nature of networking infrastructure that it provides research opportunities not just for one small community of researchers addressing a particular class of research project but also enhances research productivity across a number of disciplines. The following, summarized from the proposal, are some examples of research activities that will benefit from the connectivity that will result from this project.Geophysics: Global-scale convection of the Earth's mantle and its associated volcanology is a complex, multi-scale phenomenon that must take into account upper boundary stresses associated with tectonic plates, huge contrasts in material properties (e.g., liquid magma to ductile solid rock to brittle cool rock), a very large range of dynamic length scales, and phase changes. University of Hawaii researchers investigate mantle convection using sophisticated and data-intensive numerical modeling requiring high-bandwidth access to national supercomputer centers.Astronomy: Mauna Kea hosts thirteen telescopes operated by astronomers from eleven countries, including optical, infrared, submillimeter and radio astronomy facilities. These resources are used by astronomers in the continental United States and throughout the world for discovery-oriented astronomical research. Successive generations of telescopes generate a growing volume of digital imagery, much of it analyzed remotely. By reducing the need for individual researchers to travel to the telescopes themselves, remote observation over global research and education networks will enable scientists to be more productive. In addition, the advanced connectivity proposed will make possible, "the development of virtual observatories that integrate data from different instruments to enable greater insight than would be possible through any single experiment." Environmental sciences: With its unique ecosystems, geology and mid-ocean setting, Hawaii is home to a number of environmental research activities that, taken together, generate and maintain a diverse collection of environmental science databases. The network connectivity proposed will provide researchers outside Hawaii with better access to these data which are important for research in a number of different environmental science fields.High-end computing: The science and engineering faculty members at the University of Hawaii make heavy use of high-end computing in a number of areas of research. The national high-end computing infrastructure for open science, provided by NSF and the Department of Energy's Office of Science, is located in the continental United States. With time, such research has become progressively more data-intensive, highlighting a need for higher bandwidth network connections between Hawaii and the mainland to support the transfer of input and output datasets of increasing size, as well as the use of interactive visualization and computational steering. Collaborative research: In addition to some of the examples above, University of Hawaii researchers play an important role in a number of research collaborations. One example is the Science and Technology Center for Microbial Oceanography--Research and Education (C-MORE). This consists of six partner institutes (University of Hawaii and five on the mainland) collaborating on research in ocean microbiology, including the ocean's microbial biogeochemistry-energy web. One of the tools used is called the OptiPortal, a bandwidth-hungry, advanced visualization and collaboration tool that will expand understanding of the biogeochemical cycling of the ocean by bringing together a variety of data sets from the institutional partners onto one "canvas" for analysis. The project's broader impacts include the provision of infrastructure for research and education in science and engineering, with an impact both in the United States and internationally. For example, enhanced connectivity will not only promote research in the U.S. but also strengthen astronomical research in a number of countries around the world. The proposed infrastructure provides opportunities for the closer integration of research and education. NSF's investments in tools for cyber-enhanced education have resulted in a variety of educational tools that are intended for online use. The ability of the over 250 public schools and campuses of higher education on Hawaii, to make use of the proposed network connectivity will make it easier for these educational tools, hosted at sites across the United States, to be used in education on Hawaii itself. Examples include the resources of the academic Open Courseware Consortium. Federal agencies and federally funded projects also make large volumes of data available online that become the grist for research and learning. Federally supported online collections of data critical for contemporary research cover a wide range of fields and include GenBank, the Protein Data Bank, the Entrez cross-database search engine, the environmental science data holdings of the Federation of Earth Science Information Partners, the Earth System Grid's climate model output holdings, the National Center for Atmospheric Research's Research Data Archive, the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, the Hubble Space Telescope Science Data Archive, and the output from the Large Hadron Collider.The campuses of the University of Hawaii system are Native Hawaiian Serving Institutions. They also serve a wide cross-section of traditionally underserved communities from other Pacific Islanders. Through their participation in research activities that use the proposed connections, students from these communities will have additional opportunities for research training. Through access to research and educational web-sites maintained on Hawaii, the proposed connectivity will also provide mainland U.S. students with greater access to the science and culture of Hawaii.