| NSF Org: |
RISE Integrative and Collaborative Education and Research (ICER) |
| Recipient: |
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| Initial Amendment Date: | August 25, 2015 |
| Latest Amendment Date: | August 25, 2015 |
| Award Number: | 1541088 |
| Award Instrument: | Standard Grant |
| Program Manager: |
Eva Zanzerkia
RISE Integrative and Collaborative Education and Research (ICER) GEO Directorate for Geosciences |
| Start Date: | September 1, 2015 |
| End Date: | August 31, 2018 (Estimated) |
| Total Intended Award Amount: | $629,065.00 |
| Total Awarded Amount to Date: | $629,065.00 |
| Funds Obligated to Date: |
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| History of Investigator: |
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| Recipient Sponsored Research Office: |
110 INNER CAMPUS DR AUSTIN TX US 78712-1139 (512)471-6424 |
| Sponsor Congressional District: |
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| Primary Place of Performance: |
200 E Dean Keeton ST Austin TX US 78712-1532 |
| Primary Place of
Performance Congressional District: |
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| Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): |
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| Parent UEI: |
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| NSF Program(s): | EarthCube |
| Primary Program Source: |
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| Program Reference Code(s): |
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| Program Element Code(s): |
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| Award Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Fund Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Assistance Listing Number(s): | 47.050 |
ABSTRACT
Recent advances in high-resolution imaging techniques have provided a wealth of 3D datasets that reveal the microstructure of rocks and soil. It is now possible to conduct numerical experiments and construct detailed models to simulate phenomena such as fluid flow or mechanical deformation in the pore spaces of these materials. Popularly called digital rock physics, this research framework can inform important decisions in environmental, civil and petroleum engineering, as well as address key geological questions. Examples include: containing the spread of toxins or harmful bacteria in watersheds; designing safe dams; improving recovery of hydrocarbons, and understanding the history of rock formation. Researchers, however, have trouble storing and sharing these datasets due to their large sizes and the lack of standards to characterize image types and associated information about them. This impedes scientific cross-validation of the simulation approaches, and limits the development of studies that span length scales from a micrometer (a millionth of a meter, the size of individual pores and grains making up a rock) to a kilometer (the level of a geological basin or aquifer). Studies spanning length scales are important to characterize rock and flow properties at the kilometer scale that often depend on complex processes on the micrometer scale.
This project will continue the development of a sustainable, open and easy-to-use repository called the Digital Rocks Portal (https://pep.tacc.utexas.edu/). The portal will: a) organize the images and related experimental measurements of diverse porous materials; b) improve access to porous media analysis results for a wider community of geoscience and engineering researchers not necessarily trained in computer science or data analysis; and c) enhance productivity, scientific inquiry, and engineering decisions founded on a data-driven basis. The portal will incorporate software tools and pipelines that make it easier for researchers from EarthCube and beyond to organize, publish and reuse data, and for educators to quickly visualize and illustrate concepts for a wide audience. For data sustainability and continuous access, the portal is implemented within the reliable High Performance Computing Infrastructure deployed and maintained at the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) at The University of Texas at Austin, which is supported by The University of Texas System Research Cyberinfrastructure (UTRC) initiative. We will coordinate development and data integration with the High-Resolution X-ray Computed Tomography Facility at The University of Texas at Austin (UTCT), one of the largest academic imaging facilities in the nation. Finally, an important contribution will be the development of a business model for sustaining long-term preservation of important datasets obtained from research investments.
PROJECT OUTCOMES REPORT
Disclaimer
This Project Outcomes Report for the General Public is displayed verbatim as submitted by the Principal Investigator (PI) for this award. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this Report are those of the PI and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation; NSF has not approved or endorsed its content.
EarthCube IA: Digital Rocks Portal: a Sustainable Platform for Sharing, Translation, and Analysis of Volumetric Data of Porous Media
NSF EarthCube project #1541088, PI M. Prodanović, Co-PIs M. Esteva and R. Ketcham
Motivation
It is now possible to conduct numerical experiments and construct detailed models to simulate phenomena such as fluid flow or mechanical deformation in the pore spaces of these materials. Popularly called digital rock physics, this research framework can inform important decisions in environmental, civil and petroleum engineering, as well as address key geological questions. Examples include: containing the spread of toxins or harmful bacteria in watersheds; designing safe dams; improving recovery of hydrocarbons, and understanding the history of rock formation.
Intellectual merit
Researchers have trouble storing and sharing the datasets both due to their size and the lack of standardized image types and associated metadata for volumetric datasets. Any data storage should further be easily accessible for various analysis and simulation software. This impedes scientific cross-validation of the numerical approaches that characterize large scale porous media properties, as well as development of multiscale approaches required for correct upscaling. The need for large-scale curated data sets is also evident in connection with emerging opportunities associated with supervised machine learning techniques.
Project outcomes and impact
We have developed a sustainable, open and easy-to-use data management and persistent repository called Digital Rocks Portal (DRP), [1]. DRP is the first of its kind for imaged porous microstructure data (https://www.digitalrocksportal.org). It allows (1) organizing images and related experimental measurements of different porous materials in a visual manner, (2) reference/find them via digital object identifiers (DOIs), and (3) improves image access and analysis to a wider community of engineering and geosciences researchers not necessarily trained in computer science. Data can be uploaded, organized and described interactively, and published in the portal. Users can also conduct large-scale visualizations on high performance computers remotely from their web browser. DRP is implemented within the reliable, 24/7 maintained High Performance Computing infrastructure supported by the Texas Advanced Computing Center at the University of Texas at Austin. DRP has been developed within the larger set of NSF EarthCube cyberinfrastructure tools (http://www.earthcube.org). This project also supports and aligns with open and Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable (FAIR) data principles. In a broader sense, this framework can be translated to many other research fields where 2D or 3D images provide key insights, such as biomedical engineering or astronomy.
Products
The main achievement of this grant is a fully functioning volumetric imaged data management system DRP available through the web-browser [1], to-date the only portal with built-in remote visualization through the web-browser. Two conference papers have resulted from this work [3,4] and a journal paper is in preparation.
Through promotion at many conferences and workshops, as well as the digital rocks petrophysics courses Dr. Prodanović teaches at UT Austin or elsewhere, DRP has since 2015 become an established data repository, trusted and used by the rock physics community. As of 04/05/2019 it has 64 diverse datasets of prestigious national and international authorship, and growing. Just in one month prior to 04/05/2019 there were 7 newly published projects. We focus on monitoring reuse through counting downloads on the main project webpage and via Google Analytics, DOI citations and soft media (Altmetric). For instance, one example Digital Rocks Portal project [2] has since its publishing in 2016 received 763 individual downloads for all of its 9 files (i.e. more than 80 times per file), and was cited in two journal papers so far.
References
[1] M. Prodanovic, M. Esteva, M. Hanlon, G. Nanda, P. Agarwal, Digital Rocks Portal, https://www.digitalrocksportal.org/, (2015). doi:10.17612/P7CC7K.
[2] Z. Karpyn, C. Landry, M. Prodanovic, Induced rough fracture in Berea sandstone core, (2016). doi:10.17612/P7J012.
[3] S. Sweat, A. Ranganath, M. Esteva, M. Prodanović, User Guided Design: Building Confidence in Engineering Data Publication, in: University of Texas at Austin, Denver, CO, 2016. doi:10.15781/T27940X4W.
[4] M. Esteva, S. Sweat, R. McLay, W. Xu, S. Kulasekaran, Data Curation with a Focus on Reuse, in: ACM Press, 2016: pp. 45–54. doi:10.1145/2910896.2910906.
Last Modified: 04/11/2019
Modified by: Masa Prodanovic
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