The CO2- community grid - a virtual research environment for the simulation of CO2-sequestration

In this presentation we describe a virtual research environment (VRE) for massively parallel simulations related CO₂-sequestration in porous media. The VRE allows for the usage of a number of supercomputers located in the countries Demmark, Finland, Norway and Germany. This is realized by means of a grid infrastructure, a kind of meta-computing system, based on the Nordugrid software ARC, which provides a unified access to supercomputers. To ease the use of the system, the VRE is realized on a service computer. This computer gives access to users and provides them with a simple, unified access to supercomputer platforms.
The infrastructure currently supports the (parallel) execution of applications on the base of MUFTE-UG, a simulation platform for Multi-Phase-Multi-Component flow simulations. The Grid-System allows for parallel execution of multiple instances of MUFTE-UG, in turn itself a massively parallel software environment. The characteristics of the system (system features, available compute resources, statistics) will be discussed in detail.
In the future we aim to support additionally other software platforms, to attract further compute resources and to realize extended support for interdisciplinary collaboration. The latter will incorporate communication channels like message boards and shared collaborative work spaces. The workspaces intend to bring together researchers from environmental sciences, applied mathematics and computer science. The future plans will be sketched.