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THE APAC MERIT ALLOCATION SCHEME FOR DATA PROJECTS

The APAC National Facility has access to resources in the ANU Data System and is able to provide services for complex structured or large data projects. Further details on the current transition of APAC and the resources in the National Facility can be found at http://www.apac.edu.au/nci/ and http://nf.nci.org.au/.

The APAC Merit Allocation Scheme (MAS) allows researchers to access the resources of the data system at the APAC National Facility based on merit, national priorities, and requirements for improving computational modeling. Applications to the scheme for these resources are assessed by a Merit Allocation Committee.

Applications

Calls for applications to the Merit Allocation Scheme are made every 6 months in late April and October for allocations to start in the following July and January. Allocations are made for up to 12 months at a time. Due to the range of complex issues in servicing data projects, the merit committee currently prefers projects to first establish their needs through a start-up process. In such cases where the needs are easily identified, or are more significant, the committee will directly consider the application.

Applications to the scheme may be submitted at any time however, when there are reasons for not being able to submit at the time of the calls. Such applications should ask for resources for a period of less than a year to bring the project into line with the normal January or July cycle.

Details and forms to apply for grants can be found here.

Who May Apply

Subject to the conditions of use any staff member of an Australian Higher Education Institution may apply to the Merit Allocation Scheme. Postgraduate students should apply through their supervisors. Successful applicants and their project team members are eligible to use the grants awareded by the Merit Allocation Committee.

Each applicant must obtain approval (signature on the application form) from an authorised delegate of their employer to indicate that resources at the employer's institution are available to support the application.

The Merit Allocation Committee has a policy of one project per Principal Investigator, but special cases are still being considered for the Data Scheme. It is possible for the principal investigator to be connected to other researchers' projects as well as having their own project.

The Principal Investigator should be the person who has ownership or has a custodianship role for the data in a community. This person should also be able to provide details regarding the value of data, the size of its user community and its demand for the data.

Resources are also available to industrial users for technology diffusion purposes and those interested should contact APAC.

The Merit Allocation Committee

A Merit Allocation Committee established under APAC has been continued to the NCI program. The MAS determines the Projects which will be granted access under this Scheme. The membership of the Merit Allocation Committee is given here.

National and international referees may be contacted by the Merit Allocation Committee. Applicants may nominate referees but the choice of referees is at the discretion of the Committee. Applicants may also nominate persons that should not be contacted.

The National Facility Manager will also attend Merit Allocation Committee meetings (without voting rights) to advise it on technical matters.

Resources Available at the APAC National Facility

The National Facility aims to provide a world-class data system accessible to researchers anywhere in Australia. The support will involve a resource grant on the data system of the National Facility and, to the extent possible with available technical staff, advice on the access and management of this data.

Allocations are made in capacity and, as needed computation, which reflect both the time used and the priority at which it is used. For computation related to data analysis, a Service Unit (SU) corresponds to one hour of elapsed time on one processor of the systems. Researchers may use the allocated resources at graded levels of priority. Resources used at a higher priority consume more Service Units than when used at a lower priority. Details of priority levels are published on the APAC National Facility Web site.

The Merit Allocation Committee will assign a grant of resources on the data system for a calendar year. In the case of very large resource requirements, the project may be asked to make contributions to the data storage or other components of the system.

APAC will issue a statement of offer to successful applicants. The offer will indicate the level of resources awarded by the Merit Allocation Committee and the conditions under which these resources can be used. It is expected that a supported project will have storage requirements of at least several Tbytes, or sufficiently complex data needs to require the National Facility. These may include high performance database management, access requirements, or intensive I/O needs to large data managed inside the facility. Projects may also be supported which require more modest resources, but which require access to special capabilities presented by the National Facility systems (eg. software, large memory, fast turnaround).

The National Facility has a budget to install system and application software that is commonly used by the research community. Users may be required to contribute funds to install software that is required by only a small number of users. Suggestions for acquisition of additional software may be made by users on the appropriate form . Note that the grant of resources by the Merit Allocation Committee does not imply that APAC will necessarily acquire any software requested for that project.

Users are expected to access the National Facility via AARNet. The National Facility will cover the AARNet charges that it incurs, but users must pay for any communications charges billed directly to them from AARNet and any other communications organisations.

Users will also have access to assistance from the professional staff in the National Facility and usage of visualization facilities at the ANU when visiting the National Facility. The extent of this support will be determined on the basis of need and priorities.

Evaluation Criteria

The evaluation of applications will be based on the following criteria:

• The research merit including the potential of the work to generate knowledge in an important area, the comparative research merits of the work within its discipline, originality and international competitiveness
• The extent to which the data is nationally signficant and support collaboration by researchers at different institutions
• The extent to which the data is available and the end-user community is identified
• The capacity and complexity of the data requirements
• The demand for the data sets to be managed on the National Facility Data System; in particular that the data requirements cannot be met by the systems currently used for managing the data or reasonable enhancements to them.
• The suitability of the National Facility Data system to manage the data; in particular:
  • Storing and Accessing the data sets on the National Facility do not incur unacceptable network charges to APAC or the host institution.
  • Storing and accessing the data sets on the National Facility do not adversely affect the operation of the system or networks by unsustainable usage patterns.
• The track record of the applicant in using the National Facility data system where relevant.

Project Start-Up Grants

Start-up grants are available to help researchers and National Facility evaluate the data requirements and prepare applications for the MAS. Postgraduate students can be connected users on projects with their supervisors as the principal investigator.

Start-up Grants are readily available at any time. Requests can be made directly to the National Facility on a simple form available from here and will not be considered by the Merit Allocation Committee. Start-up grants are short-term and cannot be renewed. The National Facility may provide feedback to help prepare the project for a MAS request.

The National Facility may use its discretion to reject or limit a request after discussion with the applicant. If applicants disagree with such decisions, they may submit an application to the Merit Allocation Scheme.

Conditions of Applications and Use

Applications should not depend on the MAS grants to provide archival storage for their data sets and they need to have a strategy for the long-term storage of such data sets.

Applications should also have a strategy for back-up of their data sets off-site. The ANU has a second-site storage facility capable of storing up to 100 Tbytes of data. This enables critical data to be stored in two locations. Applicants should discuss with National Facility staff the possibility of having some or all of their data stored on this second data silo. Operational considerations currently prevent the ANU from gauranteeing copies of every projects data in its off-site silo. While two copies are kept on separate tapes, ANU cannot recover all of the data on the Data System in the event of an event destroying both those copies.

Grants may be offered on the basis that the project contributes to some of the costs for managing the data. The conditions may also require the project to contribute effort to transferring the data to the Data System and with tools to manage and access the data.

Projects may be asked to contribute to the costs of tape media, compute servers and network charges where such costs become substantial. Some projects may require significant upgrades to the hardware and software system. In such cases there may be a delay between approval of a project and the availability of the service. APAC reserves the right to not proceed with a project requiring such upgrades or where the requested lifetime of the data would create significant management problems.

Projects whose characteristics change substantially over time may have their eligibility reviewed. In the event that inappropriate usage beyond agreed parameters leads to unexpected costs to APAC or ANU, the project may be expected to contribute to such costs.

One of the difficulties with grants for data storage is that users generally want a long term commitment to maintaining such data sets. APAC has decided to offer grants for data resources on a 1-year basis which can be renewed by application to the MAS.

In the event that APAC is unable to continue to provide resources, APAC will facilitate discussions with the ANU and the PI for the data project to develop arrangements for managing the data beyond the term of APAC's support.

Applicants must obtain approval from an authorised delegate of their employer to indicate that resources at the employer's institution are available to support the application.

Successful applicants are required to provide reports on their use of the National Facility. The National Facility currently requests reports once per year.

All applicants must acknowledge that they and project team members will abide by the acceptable use policy for the National Facility.

Disclaimer

While every effort will be made to fully support projects granted resources, APAC cannot guarantee that the allocations can be fully utilised as a result of scheduling, networking and other operational issues.

APAC Web-site: http://www.nci.org.au/

APAC National Facility Web-site: http://nf.nci.org.au/