HPC Cloud-based prediction of air quality
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- POC
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- HPC Cloud-based prediction of...
Numtech is a French SME specialised in air-quality and meteorological simulations. European regulations on the protection of air-quality require more and more the testing and evaluation of adaptation and reduction scenarios. From the traditional evaluation of 2 to 3 scenarios, consulting companies and regional air-quality agencies are now facing the need to evaluate tens of scenarios. This requires a large increase in their capacity for computing beyond what they can easily manage with in-house resources.
Start date: 01/07/2013
Duration in months: 18
Problem Description
Demonstrate the possibility of running urban air-quality simulations using Cloud-based HPC would help to increase the numbers of scenarios which could be feasibly simulated in a given time. This is required to quantify statistical uncertainties associated with the simulations. Using an HPC system would also reduce the computational time needed for such simulations.
Goals
Reduce time to solution
Challenges
The challenge of this case study was to demonstrate the use of Cloud-based-HPC services to investigate air-quality at the scale of cities.
Innovation results
ADMS-Urban has been adapted to run on a Cloud-based HPC system. The results of the simulations were then made available via a familiar workstation environment. In doing this, an evaluation of the viability of this service on commercial HPC clouds has been carried out and possible business models for such a service have been proposed.
Business impact
Using Cloud-based HPC services, as evaluated in FORTISSIMO, NUMTECH can realise total cost savings in production of €125k over the next 5 years. This allows NUMTECH to offer more competitive services. It is estimated that NUMTECH’s turnover will increase by a total of €750k over the next 5 years, thanks to new customers. Finally, the new capacity to launch multiple scenarios at reasonable cost using SaaS constitutes a new business model that will further increase NUMTECH’s turnover by €150k up to 2020.