Integrating CyberGIS gateway with Windows Azure: a case study on MODFLOW groundwater simulation

The CyberGIS Gateway represents a cutting-edge cyberin-frastructure-based geographic information system that facilitates computationally intensive and collaborative spatial analysis and modeling. As more and more geospatial problems are becoming increasingly computationally intensive and complex to solve, Cloud computing, often characterized as on-demand and elastic, provides promising approaches to these problems. This research has developed an integration framework for CyberGIS Gateway to leverage the Microsoft Windows Azure Cloud platform. The framework is based on a generic architectural design for the CyberGIS Gateway to integrate with Cloud computing environments. This paper describes our initial implementation of the integration framework based on a case study of groundwater ensemble run, and discusses major challenges and future direction for establishing hybrid cyberinfrastructure encompassing both high-end and Cloud computing environments.