NSF Gives Supercomputer Time For 3-D Model of Spill 102
CWmike writes "Scientists have embarked on a crash effort to use one the world's largest supercomputers to create 3-D models to simulate how BP's massive Gulf of Mexico oil spill will affect coastal areas. Acting within 24 hours of receiving a request from researchers, the National Science Foundation late last week made an emergency allocation of 1 million compute hours on a supercomputer at the Texas Advanced Computing Center to study how BP's gusher will affect coastlines. The computer model they are working on 'has the potential to advise and undergird many emergency management decisions that may be made along the way, particularly if a hurricane comes through the area,' said Rick Luettich, a professor of marine sciences and head of the Institute of Marine Sciences at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, who is one of the researchers on this project. Meanwhile, geographic information systems vendor ESRI has added a social spin to GIS mapping of the BP oil spill."
In Time? (Score:3, Interesting)
Is it really possible to develop, test, and run a complex simulation of the gulf's currents and weather in time for it to be useful for the recovery? It seems to me like the kind of job that could take a couple years to get right, even assuming we know everything we need to make such a simulation. Maybe they want the simulation developed today so that it can be used to evaluate potential future disasters? To help quantify the risk involved in this kind of drilling?
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Re:In Time? (Score:5, Interesting)
Considering that BP doesn't even bother measuring how much oil is spilling
Well, I'm pretty sure that they have a rough idea, and it's way more than what they're saying in public. They just don't want to formalize their estimates, because then they'll have to report the numbers. I did some napkin (units(1)) calculations based on the volume of dispersant that they say they've been using and, if they're using at the suggested dilution, then at a minimum they're dealing with 60K~500K barrels per day.
((don't have the actual calculations on hand, right now, and I'm on a different computer, so I can't even just look at my command line history))
And that's a minimum.... the volume that they're using may be limited by the supply chain.
I'm guessing that, in internal conversations, they're duck-speaking their way around solid numbers... For example, they can talk about how much dispersant they'll need ( a number based on oil flow), but there's probably an unwritten rule about never mentioning the oil flow estimate that underlies that calculation, because it'll be seekable in disclosure requests, and they'll still be able to 'truthfully' claim that they've never talked about the actual oil flow.
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Well, I'm pretty sure that they have a rough idea, and it's way more than what they're saying in public.
That's a pretty solid statement. They've gone out of their way not to actually mention any figures in their public statements. All the 5k barrels / day numbers come from people like the Coast Guard and NOAA. The only numbers BP reports are what worked, i.e. how much oil they are syphoning off with their riser insertion tube.
:-)
Given the circumstances can you really blame them.
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Except for the one where they admitted that the pipe they attached was drawing 5K barrels/day into the ship with no visible decrease in the leak rate. That one did come from BP.
Re:In Time? (Score:5, Funny)
If my knowledge of B-movies is correct, there's already a GUI interface with 3D graphic modelling too (in Visual Basic, no less)! It's just a matter of typing a few parameters on a keyboard. How real supercomputers got mixed up in a cheap disaster movie, I'll never know.
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Re:In Time? (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, You're actually not too far from the truth. Surprisingly enough, video game engines provide great simulators for these kinds of things.
I know of a few cases where people have licensed the Unreal Engine for creating their own simulators, specifically I think it was to deal with some high collision testing. Since the Unreal team has started with some fluids physics, its not hard to see someone possibly using that engine to simulate the effects.
Then, all thats needed is the writing of Entities, which is usually done in C++, not VB. But the idea is the same, you only need about a weeks worth (40 hours) to write the basic entities you'll need, and maybe a bit longer for the complicated ones. Depends on what you are simulating, but if say there are only 4 different types of matter they have to consider, water, oil, air, dirt, than there really isn't that much to add.
So, really, the GUI would be already made, it'd probably be the Unreal Map Editor. The Code they would be writing would be C++, which most /.ers can at least recognize, and you won't need to make any models, since you are going to be using brushes for the landscape and liquids for the rest.
Not that they had to us Unreal, they also could use the Source Engine, though I don't think source offers much in the lines of liquids. But there are actually many ways to go about this. In fact, some modelling and animation software lets you simulate water physics, one in particular I know but I can't recall the name right now. (A plugin for Maya or 3dsMax or Softimage? Bah).
So really, the only LENGTHY part of development is duplicating the ocean currents, which if you have recent records on, is about as trivial as stitching their co-ordinates to the map you create, and making your entities flexible enough to handle the varied input.
I'm not trying to belittle the task of simulating something like this, but with a team of 10 or so people I could see it being done rather quickly. You have to realize that simulations are never quite 100% like the real thing. They have to cut off at some approximation point to keep the simulation running, otherwise the computer would hang trying to figure out the googelth digit. So, really, because the gulf is so large, its not like they have to calculate everything down to the particle.
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Uh, no. Nobody uses the Unreal Engine or the Source Engine to model diffusion and fluid flow. This is a field I work in professionally and academically, and you'd be a laughing stock if you seriously suggested taking this route. There is an enormous difference between a game engine which is designed to make things look good, and an accurate physical simulator.
Furthermore, the underlying software already exists, academically and commercially, with 6 figure licensing fees, which is good because developing a s
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And yes, there's also a lot of graphical toolboxes [ucar.edu] so whipping together
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Simplistic, I know, but it could happen. Still, it took 30+ days for the oil to reach New Orleans. They've got a little bit of time to model this stuff out and give disaster areas a bit of warning. (About as effective as a tornado warning can be.)
Re:In Time? (Score:4, Informative)
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NAVOCEANO is already running a highly complex simulation of the gulfs currents, tides and weather systems. It would only be a matter of adding the modeling of the oil.
Offtopic (Score:5, Insightful)
Explain something to me: you people bitch about government getting involved with private industry, yet when BP screws up, you demand the government to take over. WTF?
You want the government to take over...ok, what do you expect them to do? BP has the equipment, the government does not.
You all want the government to step in...yet you don't want them to raise the liability cap. So...you want taxpayers to pay for cleaning up a private company's mess, then?
Shifting gears...
This is NOT a reason to stop offshore drilling. Offshore drilling is an essential part of our current energy use. What this is, however, is a good reason to reinforce laws surrounding safety and preparedness standards...and make sure they are fucking followed.
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The government should hire all they can to contain and control the situation
They already have (and have had) a page set up specifically for this [whitehouse.gov].
and make BP pay for it, since BP won't act on their own to minimize profits damages instead of environmental damages.
They are trying to, but many Republicans are blocking legislation to raise or remove the liability cap [foxbusiness.com].
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who's sole purpose is to put an oil company out of business.
No, it's sole purpose is to make sure they keep their word.
BP has said they will take responsibility for the cleanup. We got a long way to go before we know if they're going to hold to their word.
This will ensure they keep their word. If they have already agreed to pay, what's the harm in making that statement legally binding?
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Uh, dude, ex post facto laws are unconstitutional. Unfortunately, BP skates out of this one because of legislative mistakes the past (I'll bet that "emergency fund" looked like a mighty convenient raiding target...). The proper thing to do is to change things so that liability is properly apportioned in the future, not create a constitutional crisis that if popular enough could significantly erode fundamental protections.
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The government should manage it, the company should pay. That would keep the motives separate, anyway. Not that we really want to put something as slow as a government in charge. But it might prove to be better than a corporation.
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That's what they are already doing, though [whitehouse.gov]...what else do you want from them?
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Do you happen to have a non-propaganda news source? America's answer to Pravda is hardly what most people would consider credible.
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You could listen to hearings on C-SPAN, in which BP execs acknowledge the government's role in assisting them. Or you could just Google for the information yourself.
No offense, but the fact that you are convinced that the White House is lying about having boots on the ground in the Gulf leads me to believe you likely get your info from a regular News Org, yes?
C-SPAN all the way. Direct from the horse's mouth, no filter.
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Oh, I have no doubt that the WH has "boots on the ground," as you say. I also have no doubt that the WH also has "boots under the beds" of execs from just about every sector including energy, media, finance, and automotive.
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I'm not denying that...in fact, I would agree with you.
Regardless, the poster asked for proof that the administrationw as actually doing something, and I provided it. ::shrug::
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Proper fucking booming would've been a good start.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/5/11/865387/-Fishgrease:-DKos-Booming-School [dailykos.com]
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Who the hell in the government has the deep drilling experience to be able to understand the issues (and scale) at hand?! I would have hoped that the government would have watched over BP and made sure the booms were being done properly, but my guess is that the under-water problem is much more severe than anything you really see at the surface.
Re:Offtopic (Score:5, Insightful)
Proof that a moderate such as myself will never be labeled as such.
I'm for offshore drilling because it provides us with the energy source that we currently need today. I'm also in favor of extensively researching and quickly implementing alternative fuels so that we can get away from oil entirely.
With me, it isn't "drill, baby, drill"...it's "drill for now, but not for long". Thanks for your partisan slant though, I appreciate it.
Re:Offtopic (Score:5, Insightful)
Proof that a moderate such as myself will never be labeled as such.
I'm for offshore drilling because it provides us with the energy source that we currently need today. I'm also in favor of extensively researching and quickly implementing alternative fuels so that we can get away from oil entirely.
With me, it isn't "drill, baby, drill"...it's "drill for now, but not for long". Thanks for your partisan slant though, I appreciate it.
You often see this in discussions. I think the propaganda, demagoguery, invective, and intellectual dishonesty so frequently seen in the media and especially in politics has infected the easily impressionable who derive their mannerisms and actions from the media. You can call them sheeple, mindless automatons who think their behaviors and thoughts are their own original creations, easily impressionable, non-self-aware, unable to carry out introspection, followers, and lots of other things. As for that post to which you replied, what happened there has happened to me several times.
The (lack of) thinking goes something like this: "well, he used certain words or otherwise vaguely sounds a little bit like a cookie-cutter opinion that I have seen before, probably from some pundit, therefore I will refuse to deal with him as an individual and will instead regard him as a member of a school of thought or other group identity, that way I don't have to bother really listening to what he has to say or understanding where he is coming from." You'll notice this is always done to condemn and belittle, for that's how such people obtain their worthless sense of worth. Specifically, it's an attempt to diminish in order to make it easier to condemn. It treats people as members of a system and it's the very opposite of treating others like human beings.
The motivation is that they are not interested in truth. They are interested in feeling "right" or better than someone else at all costs. For them, argumentation is not about testing ideas and increasing understanding. It's about humiliating your opponent and rubbing his nose in it. Thus, they have no interest in dealing with individual human beings for, unlike mindless talking points, there are no automatic ready answers for the points they make. That interferes with their goal of feeling "right" and at the very least makes them work much harder to achieve it.
In closing, a quote from Aristotle:
Hubris: "to cause shame to the victim, not in order that anything may happen to you, nor because anything has happened to you, but merely for your own gratification. Hubris is not the requital of past injuries; this is revenge. As for the pleasure in hubris, its cause is this: men think that by ill-treating others they make their own superiority the greater."
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While I don't post on them, I frequent the Fox News, Politico, and a few other political forums. From what I've seen on them (and from the few hard-right folks that I know in real life), they are many of the same people.
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Well, not in some cases: [washingtonpost.com]
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If you haven't noticed, there are forces in our government that don't want us to be a strong, stable, well-managed, independent country. It would interfere with their desire to undermine our national sovereignty in order to accelerate globalism and a
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You want the government to take over...ok, what do you expect them to do? BP has the equipment, the government does not.
First off, whoever modded you offtopic should have his moderator priveledges taken away.
Now to the actual topic: Government shouldn't take over, but they'd damned well better show some oversight, and make sure that BP is following all laws to the letter. They may have the equipment, but they don't have the motivation -- their only motivation is to rake in profits, or the "accident" wouldn'
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Why aren't corporate heads ever put in prison for negligent homicide when the company disobeys laws and people die?
The insight shown in the rest of your post leads me to believe you don't actually need that question answered "out loud" :-)
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No, but a lot of people never even think of the question. Why isn't everyone asking it, loudly, to their lawmakers?
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Like I said, I am 100% for improving and incorporating alternative energy sources into our overall energy plan...but even if we started doing that in earnest tomorrow, we will still be relying on oil for some years to come. The more we can produce here, the less money we will be giving to nations that support people who hate us. 3.3% may not be much, but it's still something.
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3.3% may not be much, but it's still something.
The question is, is that something worth the risks involved in expanding deep water drilling? IMHO, unless the regulatory structure surrounding the industry is *massively* overhauled, I'd say the clear answer to that is "no", as neither the companies nor the regulatory bodies can be trusted to preserve the coastlines, which are the economic lifeblood for many many people, people who would be far more damaged by destroyed coastlines than the absence of that 3.3
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Responsibility and liability are two different things, and worse, the Federal government already limited BP's liability through previous legislation.
But the Responsibility for protecting the *coast* rests ultimately, on whoever actually wants the coast to be protected. The residents, for sure, many of the rest of us, as well. In that regard, if certain youtube [youtube.com] videos can be considered representative, the governments at all levels up to the federal have been as negligent as BP: It's been spewing for like a
You haven't really thought this through, have you? (Score:1)
> This is NOT a reason to stop offshore drilling. Offshore drilling is an essential part of our current energy use. What this is, however, is a good reason to reinforce laws surrounding safety and preparedness standards...and make sure they are fucking followed.
Well, that sounds reasonable. But, then, as you pointed out:
> You want the government to take over...ok, what do you expect them to do? BP has the equipment, the government does not.
So.... ummm.... hmmm. I'm stumped. How exactly is regulator Jo
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This is NOT a reason to stop offshore drilling. Offshore drilling is an essential part of our current energy use. What this is, however, is a good reason to reinforce laws surrounding safety and preparedness standards...and make sure they are fucking followed.
"This" is not a reason to stop offshore drilling; the very concept should not have been employed at our current technological level. And really, it should never have been employed. We have enough desert and sufficient technology to replace all our offshore drilling with biodiesel from algae. Once you realize that, you have to understand that the idea is simply immoral. It's about profit, plain and simple; there's money to be made doing it, so we will do it whether it is actually beneficial to the human race
Um... (Score:1)
Re:Um... (Score:5, Insightful)
Rest assured...someone knows. It just isn't us. BP likely knows, which is (from their perspective) a good reason why we don't.
Re:Um... (Score:4, Informative)
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They're pumping out 5K barrels of oil/water mixture, that's a pretty big difference.
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Good for initial estimates, that is all. (Score:2)
"I don't think that they have any idea how this oil is predicted to move through the marshes and the nearshore zone," said Luettich.
I understand that "nearshore" zones may be hard to predict: I wonder if that map [computerworld.com] (see white line) shows how close to shore they can predict...
Also this may be used as a forecast model, but to me it seems like measuring and predicting a hurricane while ignoring storm surge...but I am not going to be critical with little knowledge on what data was available to the programmers.
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Many of the computer models tracking the oil spill have resolutions of 500 meters to a kilometer, but the model being created on the Texas supercomputer can bring the detail down to a resolution of 50 to 40 meters, which is fine enough to show, for instance, simulations of currents moving up channels, said Dawson.
I need to work my reading comprehension skills haha (I'm up to a third grade level now!) Also...
The project is getting a "high priority," said another researcher, Clint Dawson, a professor of aerospace engineering and engineering mechanics at the University of Texas. "What our model can do that a lot of the other models can't do is actually track the oil spill up into marshes and the wetlands because we have fine-scale resolution in those areas."
Tracking and predicting are two different sets of challenges in my opinion. I applaud the attempt to forecast and use models to hopefully mitigate damage, but I am still skeptical on how they will model the oil after it has already hit the marshes outside of tide patterns... I guess we will just have to wait and see :)
Accountability (Score:2)
Photos of Louisiana Shores (Score:5, Interesting)
I caught this link a day or two ago. Take a look. [boston.com]
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Someone mod this post up...those photos were amazing and really are worth viewing! I found the aerial pictures of the oil booms really interesting, thanks AC!
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I found the aerial pictures of the oil booms really interesting, thanks AC!
You mean, the way they are fucking done completely fucking wrong. [youtube.com]?
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Compute Hours? (Score:5, Informative)
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"compute hour", also known as "CPU time" vs say, "wallclock time".
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i wonder if there would be a better way of us DONATING our unused cycles to the project. because 15 hours kind of sucks.
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Tar Ball (Score:5, Funny)
They should make a big Tar Ball containing the build of the software they write that performs this analysis.
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Could be the software you use on Linux/BSD (Score:2)
I wouldn't be surprised if they are using off the shelf tools like FFTW on that supercomputer. It was just yesterday I was amazed at IBM featuring FFTW3 binaries and sources for BlueGene, just like some laptop support software from their website.
I can't find the URL (which I saw on IBM) now but, as you see from here http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/skral/fftwgel.html [tuwien.ac.at] , it is just 2.7 mb ordinary tar.gz file, builds on PowerPC 440. Of course, number of PPC 440's it runs on is what matters :)
Computer Models (Score:1)
Where's Bruce Willis when you need him? (Score:1)
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Oh, and why don't oil rigs have a large containment boom around them in the first place?
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Basically that was one of the first things they tried [csmonitor.com]: "If successful, the containment box would begin funneling as much as 85 percent of the oil plume into a pipeline pumping the oil into a barge on the surface as early as Sunday." That was May 7.
As for the boom, A) they're not working all that well and B) with the well a mile underwater, it could disperse over a huge area before reaching the surface.
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Pretty sure you want Ed Harris for your underwater drilling problems...
Should be interesting. (Score:2)
This will probably be a big, complex simulation. It will be interesting to see how well it matches up with reality.
How does this help? (Score:2)
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The effects of the spill will suck, and will suck for a long time (the halibut still have not returned to the area around the Exxon Valdez spill). How will knowing in advance just how badly it will suck help?
By understanding how the oil will diffuse and spread in the ocean, they can direct cleanup efforts to areas that are likely to be hit hardest. There are, after all, a finite number of people, booms (yes, even fucking booms), etc, so optimizing their allocation is important.
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It's called science you ignorant shit. I know a large portion of the population can't handle the concept of research, but do try to at least stay off of slashdot.
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5,000 barrels a day or 80,000 barrels per day? (Score:1)
I'm curious to learn what numbers they're using for their analysis, since BP has been cagey and lying about the actual amount of oil flowing from the leak. For their model to predict accurately, they'll have to use better numbers than BP is fudging us with.
http://homelandsecuritynewswire.com/bp-oil-leak-much-bigger-official-estimates [homelandse...wswire.com]