Review of the invisible modelling environment (TIME)

[摘要] The Invisible Modelling Environment (TIME) is a model development framework, supporting model developers in the creation and testing of algorithms and in the development of standalone modelling applications (Rahman et al., 2005). TIME provides a framework for spatial and temporal data analysis.TIME has been developed under the sponsorship of eWater CRC and its predecessor CRC for Catchment Hydrology. As well as providing a modelling framework, TIME supports model users with a range of data analysis and management, model processing and visualisation tools. TIME comprises a collection of .NET classes, libraries and visualisation components for developing models and applications.With the completion of the eWater CRC and transition to eWater Limited in July 2012, it is opportune for CSIRO to strategically review and assess its position in relation to the future development of TIME going forward. This review aims to consider the current technical capacity of the code base, how short term transitional arrangements will be implemented and potential future directions that CSIRO may wish to pursue with TIME. This review is intentionally internally focussed on CSIRO. We acknowledge the broader TIME development community and the broad range of applications built upon TIME, however the focus of this review is CSIRO’s use of and future involvement in the development of TIME.CSIRO has invested heavily in the development of TIME and has provided much of the intellectual input as well as the majority of the coding effort. CSIRO is actively involved in the continued development of TIME and supports the development and maintenance systems.At present, the TIME code base (as defined in section 4.1) contains approximately 360,000 lines of code. There are 2040 individual classes, and 16968 public methods and properties. The TIME code base currently has 153 registered users. Of these 57 are considered to be active. All these users are based in Australia. These users are distributed over 31 individual organisations (Table 2) across 5 States. There are 84 federal agency, 27 university, 22 state agency and 19 private sector registered users.TIME is a core component of a large range of formal software products, as well as numerous research programs. Currently the TIME code base is incorporated into approximately 23 eWater supported applications. These products have currently been downloaded from the eWater Toolkit web site a total of 38,360 times. The “eWater Source” products are a major focus of this product range and are extensively used by government and private enterprise in addressing water quantity and quality policy questions. Time is also integrated into a range of CSIRO specific products and projects such as the “Hydrologists Workbench” and the Australian Water Resources Assessment (AWRA) system, a continental water balance monitoring system that is being developed jointly by CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology.A review of the strengths and weaknesses of TIME was conducted and this was used to guide suggestions for improvements to the existing code base. A variety of research and development activities to further enhance the functionality of TIME is also presented. Most if not all of these suggested activities will require significant investment and commitment. With this investment, the TIME environment would better support ongoing science in a broader suite of domains (e.g. soils, agriculture and environment).It is recommended that CSIRO should remain as an active participant in the further development of the TIME code base. Given the significant investment and the broad range of internal and external dependencies on TIME, it would not be prudent to abandon the development and maintenance of the TIME code base. A formal roadmap for the development of TIME should be established. It is also recommended that formal governance arrangements should be put in place to guide future development and maintenance of the TIME code base.

[发布日期] 2012-12-19 [发布机构] CSIRO

[学科分类] 地球科学(综合)