The Shell contribution has been used to acquire essential high-performance computational hardware, and will, in coming years, continue to enhance the leading-edge infrastructure that is essential to propel environmental forecasting at the School of the Coast and Environment to international stature.  Funds from other sources have, as a result, been used to supplement the hardware investment with the human resources necessary to ensure that researchers can use new equipment effectively to develop answers to sustainability questions that are quickly communicated to and grasped by decision-makers and broader public.

Future development of Shell CEML will focus to support three key elements:

• Data management
• Visualization
• Training / Education

Data management
Today, access to accurate and documented, up-to-date geometry and monitoring data is extremely limited, which means that researchers looking for well parameterized systems will tend to bypass the northern Gulf of Mexico.  While environmental modeling is an important avenue to gaining insights about scales of key processes, the new generation of models being developed to justify expenditures for restoration also are generating new criteria for data collection and management. The hardware requirements here are in enhanced storage, redundancy and networking technology.

Visualization
Given the effort that goes into validating the algorithms that govern ecosystem processes in these models, it makes sense to ensure that the technology for rendering and displaying the outcomes enhances, rather than diminishes, the realism of the output.  The LSU Center for Computation and Technology (CCT) is currently embarked on a major effort in the direction of scientific visualization.  CEML will seek hardware to allow modelers to synergize the involvement of coastal scientists in this initiative.

Training / Education
The School of the Coast and Environment is firstly a school with a primary responsibility for higher education.  The technology of ecosystem simulation must be demystified and gain acceptance for the long-range, decades-spanning expenditures necessary for successful ecosystem restoration.  Classes to teach environmental modeling will engage a range of high-technology resources that are rarely brought together for students, including interactive connectivity with HPC, GIS and scientific visualization packages.  CEML will seek hardware and software to equip a multi-workstation learning laboratory and video-conferencing facility.