Supercomputer Helps Digitally Preserve Destroyed Syrian Temple

Archaeology researchers at the University of Bradford are benefitting from the University’s first high performance computing (HPC) system.  Revolutionising the capacity for data collation, the HPC cluster enables the archaeological team to effectively preserve endangered or destroyed heritage across the world, the Temple of Bel in Palmyra, Kathmandu and Notre Dame. The new HPC environment is designed, integrated and supported by HPC, storage and data analytics integrator, OCF.

Teams of archaeologists and computing scientists from the University can support sustainable heritage initiatives using digital technologies supported by HPC. The ‘Curious Travellers’ project* was created in response to challenges brought about by natural disasters and the deliberate destruction of heritage sites. By collating hundreds of images from local people, travellers and tourists, researchers at Bradford are able to create accurate 3D models of ancient monuments and sites, producing accurate representations without artificial or artistic reconstructions.

Whether as part of an international effort to evaluate the impact of the Gorkha Earthquake in 2015 on the medieval town of Kathmandu, reconstructing Notre Dame or partnering with the National Trust and Historic England in recording the remains of World Heritage Sites including Fountains Abbey and Stonehenge, the new HPC cluster enables researchers to manipulate vast data sets for global good.

“HPC technology is shaping archaeological practice,” said Professor Vincent Gaffney, School of Archaeological & Forensic Sciences at the University of Bradford. “We are able to reconstruct heritage sites from hundreds of images recorded digitally. Importantly, the project is more than just the 3D content. By using geospatial and archaeological data that describes the site within its landscape, its context is included, providing a lasting legacy that contributes to local historical environment records.

Computing technology is not only broadening the scale at which archaeologists work, but also is making an unprecedented volume of extremely accurate data available for multinational analysis.”

The HPC system is comprised of Lenovo ThinkSystem servers with a mixture of GPU technologies and Intel Skylake processors, offering significant improvements in a number of areas including memory bandwidth, core count and throughput. The solution uses OCF’s Software stack which is made up of Open Source tools including XCAT for management, Grafana and Icinga for monitoring and reporting and Slurm for Scheduling.

“The University of Bradford’s commitment to using HPC technology to support the development of research is having a positive impact on the world,” said Julian Fielden, Managing Director of OCF. “From biosciences and engineering to computer science, social sciences and heritage science, all these disciplines are moving rapidly as increased computational power becomes more readily available and enables vastly improved research capacity. “

“Our investment in these cutting-edge high performance computing facilities complements and supports some of the University’s world-leading researchers and their work,” said Professor John Bridgeman, Pro Vice Chancellor at the University of Bradford (Research & Knowledge Transfer).  “We live and work in a world that is largely data-driven, and our state-of-the-art facilities will enable the University to continue to operate at the vanguard of data management and visualisation.”

The centralised HPC service is available to all departments across the University, already being utilised by bioinformatics through to heritage reconstruction. With one of the strongest computational chemistry groupings in the UK, the University’s researchers are now able to carry out calculations on molecules that would have been impossible without the new HPC cluster. This is providing opportunities to discover new therapies, chemical processes and materials as well as developing greater insights into complex chemical theory.

*The ‘Curious Travellers’ project is a component to the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) funded ‘Fragmented Heritage’ project, a combined £2.3 million project funded as a theme large grant under the Digital Transformations programme. Led by the University of Bradford, the ‘Curious Travellers’ project is run in conjunction with the following partners: University of St Andrews, University of Nottingham Ningbo, China (UNNC), University of Birmingham and University of Durham.

Members of the public are encouraged to upload their images of heritage sites on the University of Bradford’s dedicated website http://visualisingheritage.org/currentcampaigns.php

This article has been republished from materials provided by OCF. Note: material may have been edited for length and content. For further information, please contact the cited source.