The Irish Centre for High End Computing (ICHEC) operates and manages a modern national e-infrastructure for Ireland including Ireland’s National Supercomputer . The experience and ability that ICHEC possesses allows it to provide compute and data services in HPC, Big Data, Quantum Computing and Blockchain, supporting research and innovation across academia, public sector and industry.

1. The role of advanced computing in
Big Data, AI and Machine Learning
Irish Centre for High-End Computing (ICHEC)
Venkatesh Kannan, Sita Karki
venkatesh.Kannan@ichec.ie, sita.karki@ichec.ie
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2. About ICHEC
• Irish Centre for High-End Computing
• National Supercomputing Centre for Ireland
• Co-funded by the Irish Government departments (DBEI & DES)
• Offices in Dublin and Galway
• Data management and compute services to academic and research organisations
• Engagements with public and private sector
• Enterprise Accelerator & Innovation Hub
• Focus on big data management, high-performance data analytics and high-performance compute
• Bridging “technology providers” and “technology consumers”
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3. ICHEC Expertise
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4. • National Qπ Initiative driven by ICHEC since 2018.
• R&D for practically-relevant quantum computing
applications.
• National and European quantum computing
platforms coupled to HPC systems.
• National training programme and roadmap for
quantum computing.
• ICHEC driven in collaboration with Industry Experts Group
• EU Quantum Flagship Conference (EQTC) in
November 2021 at Dublin, Ireland.
Quantum Programming Ireland (Qπ) Initiative
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5. Earth Observation (EO)
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6. Satellite Platform for Ireland (SPÉir)
• Built and operated by ICHEC
• Collated archive of ESA satellite data sets (~150 TB per day)
• Sentinel 1 - Radar images for land & ocean services
• Sentinel 2 - Optical images for land services (vegetation, inland waterways, coastal
areas, etc.)
• Sentinel 3 - Ocean and global land monitoring services
• Sentinel 5P - Atmospheric composition & air quality monitoring services
• Interfaces & toolkits for Data and High Performance Processing Services
• Co-develop solutions
• Enterprise, public sector & research organisations leveraging satellite data
• Stakeholders engagement
• Infrastructure planning & development, environmental protection, precision
agriculture, renewable energy, climate change, …
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7. 7
AIREO Programme
AIREO
Interface
AIREO
Users
EO Features
Validation Data
Header information
Analytical Objectives
Labels
Test Data
Metadata
AIREO Datasets & Specifications
AIREO specifications
& best practices
AIREO tools &
datasets
AIREO network &
community

8. EO Applications
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9. Studying Environment from Space (INFER)
https://infer.ichec.ie/ 9

10. Field Sampling
75 sampling points across 6 Lakes
● Muckno - 38 samples
● Sillan - 10 samples
● Derravargh - 5 samples
● Owel - 7 samples
● Sheelin - 5 samples
● Gill -10 samples
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11. Field Radiometry
● Field radiometry was conducted using TRIOS RAMSES from
late 2019 to early 2020.
● The current procedure entails collection of reflectance
data from the lakes during the S2 overpass as it helps to
identify the correct atmospheric correction algorithm.
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12. EO Platform
Computation
using Optimized
Algorithm
Will be run on
production scale
after final validation
with TRAC
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13. •Prototype online GIS platform
•Turbidity and Chlorophyll
products from the optimized
algorithms
Prototype of EO Platform (Lakes)
https://eoplatform.ichec.ie/infer/
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14. Ulva Blooms across Estuarine and Coastal Areas of Ireland
(MACROMAN)
• 9 different estuarine areas
• 3 different ecological status
Moderate: 5
Poor: 3
Bad: 1
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15. EO and Field Data Match
• Dates: 2010 to 2018
• Sensors: Sentinel 2 and
Landsat (5 and 8)
• Sentinel (24)+Landsat (10)
• Time difference: Around
two weeks
• Field Data: EPA (Robert
Wilkes)
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16. Spatial Coverage
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17. Biomass Computation
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18. Biomass Mapping
http://www.seamatproject.net/macroman-project.html
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19. Atmospheric monitoring
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