Target (project)

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Target
LocationUniversity of Groningen, Netherlands
EstablishedJanuary 2009
FundingFunded by the
European Fund for Regional Development & partners
Websiterug.nl/target

Target is the name of a collaborative research project specialising in big data processing and management in northern Netherlands.[1] It is a public-private cooperation, initiated in 2009 and supported by government subsidies.[2] It is run by a consortium of ten academic and computer industry partners, coordinated by the University of Groningen, and researches data management of science projects in the area of astronomy, life sciences, artificial intelligence and medical diagnosis.

Cooperating in the Target project are various divisions of the University of Groningen, its medical center, IBM, Oracle, ASTRON and Dutch IT firms Elkoog/Heeii and Nspyre.

Target's computer center is hosted by the Center for Information Technology, the computing center of the University of Groningen, and consist of more than 10 petabytes of storage[3][4] based on IBM's GPFS storage technology,[5] a high-performance computing cluster and a grid cluster, which is a part of the European Grid Infrastructure.

The Target data center is hosted by the Donald Smits Center for Information Technology located at the University of Groningen, The Netherlands

History

The project was initiated to transfer expertise of astronomers in massive data processing to other areas of science. Target builds on a distributed computing environment called Astro-WISE.

European Fund for Regional Development
, the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs ("Pieken in de Delta" project), and the provinces of Groningen and Drenthe. The project runs under the auspices of the Northern Netherlands Provinces Alliance (SNN) and the Groningen municipality.

Technological findings

At the start of the project one aim was to develop a single integrated processing system, consisting of a multi-petabyte scale file system

Lofar. In astronomy, the number of data objects may run in the billions, with a limited number of data columns.[12] In genomics, the number of rows is small, but the number of columns can be huge, in the hundreds of thousands. Other areas, such as visual text retrieval in the Monk search engine for historical manuscripts are at an intermediate position with hundreds of millions of rows and thousands of dimensions. Furthermore, genomics applications often require stringent access control,[13]
whereas other disciplines have no privacy issues. Consequently, the various sub-projects within Target adopted a pragmatic approach on which aspects of the WISE technology and components of the Target hardware infrastructure were applicable to their field.

Projects

Target participates in a number of data-intensive scientific projects in astronomy,

handwritten text recognition
algorithms, medical research on healthy aging, development of diagnostic tools for Parkinson's disease and more.

LOFAR Long-term Archive

LOFAR
Long-term Archive.

Much of the data from the

LOFAR telescope is stored, accessed from and archived on the LOFAR Long-Term archive, designed by ASTRON and Target.[15][16][17]
The data will be hosted at the Target data center and several other European centers.

Monk

A screenshot of a page from the Archive of the Cabinet of the Dutch Queen (KdK) on which the word Groningen has been found by Monk.

Monk is a system, developed by Schomaker and his group at the Artificial Intelligence Institute (ALICE) at the University of Groningen. It uses pattern-recognition and machine-learning algorithms for handwritten text recognition in a variety of existing archives.[18][19][20] Currently a number of books from the Dutch National Archives as well as more than 70 international historical collections, ranging from Western, medieval to handwritten Chinese manuscripts have been ingested into Monk. The systems applies continuous ('24/7') machine learning over internet, yielding fundamental results.[vague][21] The MONK system employs the computational and storage resource of Target. It recently became part of a collaboration, led by Prof. Popovic from the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at the University of Groningen who will use a combination of carbon dating, paleography and text/image recognition techniques to try and pinpoint the authors of the popular Dead Sea Scrolls manuscripts.[22]

LifeLines

LifeLines is a long-term medical research project run by the

Free University of Amsterdam. Results from the project using whole-genome sequencing to deduce population structure and demographic history of the Dutch population were published in June in the Nature Genetics journal.[24][25]

GLIMPS

Run by K. Leenders, a professor of neurology at the UMCG, GLIMPS is a research project set to find faster and more reliable diagnostic tools for Parkinson's disease.[26] GLIMPS explores the possibilities of using complex image-based algorithms and PET scans for early detection of Parkinson's.[citation needed] To test the effectiveness of such algorithms, GLIMPS is building a large database of PET scans delivered by numerous hospitals in the Netherlands. Target is responsible for building and maintaining the GLIMPS database as well as ensuring the smooth running of the image-based algorithms on its computing facilities.

Others

Additionally, Target is involved in the data management for other astronomical projects such as KiDs/VIKING astronomical survey

E-ELT). In addition the datacentric approach to data management prompted by Target has been adopted by the ESA's Euclid mission.[32] The project's spin-off company Target Holding B.V. also manages a number of commercial projects with private businesses in the North of the Netherlands.[33]

Public outreach and education is also part of the project remit and Target has organised many public events.[34] The Infoversum 3D theatre[35][36] is a spin-off of the Target project and provides a facility for the visualisation and explanation of scientific data for large groups.

References

  1. ^ "Nederlands project kan 1,5 petabytes verwerken en opslaan" [Netherlands Project can process and save 1.5 petabytes]. nu.nl (in Dutch). 2 September 2010.
  2. ^ Edelman, Pieter (June 2, 2009). "Miljoenensubsidie voor Noord-Nederlands dataminingprogramma" [Millions in subsidy for North Netherlands datamining program]. Bits & Chips.
  3. ^ Witold, Kepinski (19 November 2010). "Gronings ICT-project klaar voor petabytes data" [Groningen ICT project ready for petabytes of data]. Computable (in Dutch).
  4. ^ Huisman, Zander (27 May 2011). "Aprycus breidt capaciteit Target-project uit" [Aprycus increases the capacity of the Target project]. Computable (in Dutch).
  5. ^ IBM Case Studies, Showcasing IBM client stories. "University of Groningen breaks new ground in scientific research". www-03.ibm.com/software/businesscasestudies/us/en/corp?OpenDocument&Site=corp&cty=en_us.
  6. S2CID 118620001
    .
  7. ISBN 9789036757591
    .
  8. S2CID 34032027. {{cite book}}: |journal= ignored (help
    )
  9. ^ Edelman, Peter (20 July 2009). "Miljoenensubsidie voor Noord Nederland Dataminingprogram" [Millioans of subsidy for North Netherlands Datamining Programme]. Bits and Chips (in Dutch). p. 45.
  10. doi:10.1147/JRD.2013.2243531
  11. doi:10.1007/s10723-010-9147-y
  12. S2CID 119233012
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  13. PMID 21739176
    .
  14. ^ "eScience Center Projects". esciencecenter.nl.
  15. Bibcode:2012ASPC..461..693B
    .
  16. doi:10.1016/j.future.2010.08.010
    .
  17. Bibcode:2012ASPC..461..635H
    .
  18. S2CID 57037481
    .
  19. S2CID 40083465
    .
  20. S2CID 18702898
    .
  21. S2CID 215715932
    .
  22. ^ RUG News (11 December 2014). "Prestigious ERC Starting Grant for Mladen Popović". Rijksuniversiteit Groningen. Retrieved 19 January 2015.
  23. PMID 18075776
    .
  24. S2CID 14316238
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  25. ^ van Wijngaarden, Arend (June 30, 2014). "Genoom Nederlandse volk ontrafeld". Dagblad van het Noorden.
  26. ^ Teune, Laura Klaaske (2013). Glucose metabolic patterns in neurodegenerative brain diseases (Thesis fully internal (DIV)). PhD Dissertation.
  27. S2CID 3082399
    .
  28. ^ Netherlands Research School for Astronomy (NOVA). "NOVA Annual Report 2011-2011-2012" (PDF). nova-astronomy. NOVA.
  29. ^ Schilling, Govert (8 June 2011). "Direct succes met supercamera" [Immediate success with super camera]. De Volkskrant (in Dutch).
  30. ^ "Superscherpe hemelfotos vanaf Chileense berg" [Super sharp photos of the heavens from Chilean mountain]. NRC Handelsblad (in Dutch). 9 June 2011.
  31. S2CID 120263291
    .
  32. S2CID 123008296
    .
  33. ^ Huisman, Zander (31 January 2013). "Target-project levert vier nieuwe bedrijven op" [Target project delivers four new companies]. Computable (in Dutch).
  34. ^ Wind, Maike (12 May 2014). "Rapportage Big Data: De man met één been en vijf kinderen" [Big Data Report: The man with one leg and five children]. Dagblad van het Noorden (in Dutch). p. 2.
  35. ^ Wind, Maike (19 June 2014). "Theater Infoversum open voor publiek" [Infoversum Theatre Opens to the public]. Groninger Gezinsbode (in Dutch). p. 19.
  36. ^ "Infoversum". De Telegraaf (in Dutch). 4 July 2014.
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