European Grid Projects Research Articles

Experiences with moving to open source standards for building and packaging

The LCMAPS family of grid security middleware was developed during a series of European grid projects from 2001 until 2013. Since 2009 we actively started to move away from ETICS, the project-specific build system, to common open-source tools for building and packaging, such as the GNU Autotools and the Fedora and Debian tool set. By following the guidelines of these mainstream distributions, and improving the source code to fit in with the commonly available open source tools, we have established low-cost, long term sustainability of the code base.

Planning and Designing Smart Grids: Philosophical Considerations

The electric power grid is a crucial part of societal infrastructure and needs constant attention to maintain its performance and reliability. European grid project investments are currently valued at over 5 billion Euros and are estimated to reach 56 billion by 2020 [2]. Successful smart grid deployment will require a holistic analysis and design process if it is to function properly and in an environmentally sustainable way. The entire system must be treated as integrated, not as isolated parts [3]. System integration and full customer engagement are crucial elements of this development. An evaluation of European smart grid projects showed that it was very difficult to grasp technological and non-technological key characteristics of this complex system [4].

A Grided World ?

A summary of the status and perspectives on Grid technology use for e-Science is presented. In particular the perspectives for High Energy Physics are described, including the experience in the LHC Computing Grid (LCG) and EGEE projects. Special emphasis on collaboration and interactive use is made showing the results of the CrossGrid project, and the possibilities opened by the new Interactive European Grid project.