LTA Development Workshop
ASTRON
Motivation
LOFAR is now well into its second decade, and has an enviable scientific and technical track record: the LOFAR team and partners have published ground-breaking papers; developed new and remarkable data reduction and processing techniques; and securely archived and distributed tens of petabytes of data.
As we prepare for the LOFAR2.0 system to enter operations within a couple of years, it is appropriate for us to take this opportunity to reflect on lessons learned from the past and from other facilities, and to plan for the future. How will we scale up to meet the increased data volumes from LOFAR2.0, and potential future extensions to LOFAR beyond that? What can we learn from the technologies under development for the SKA Regional Centres Network, or in use at other facilities both in radio astronomy (ASKAP, MeerKAT, ...) and beyond (Rubin Observatory, CERN, ...)?
We anticipate a future with more — and more complex — next-to-data pipeline processing, of interactive data analysis through tools like Jupyter notebooks, of FAIR data and interoperable archives, of an increasing number of partners stepping up to join the LTA system, and, of course, of ever increasing data volumes.
At this meeting, we aim to look multiple years into the future. Rather than focusing how to address short-term bugs or operational issues, we will focus on the long-term roadmap for the LTA, looking to define common research questions and implementation decisions to ensure LOFAR's archive and data processing system remains cutting-edge for many years to come.
This meeting will focus on data archiving, curation, and processing as well as service monitoring and reliability; we'll set issues around networking and connectivity aside for now.
Confirmed Speakers
- Maciej Brzezniak (PSNC)
- Michiel van Haarlem (LOFAR ERIC)
- Yan Grange (ASTRON)
- Fabio Hernandez (Vera C. Rubin Observatory / CC-IN2P3)
- Hanno Holties (ASTRON)
- Marcel Loose (ASTRON)
- Cristina Manzano (FZJ)
- Lodewijk Nauta (SURF)
- André Offringa (ASTRON)
- Raymond Oonk (SURF)
- Roberto Pizzo (ASTRON)
- Oleg Smirnov (Rhodes University)
- Holger Stiele (FZJ)
- Onno Zweers (SURF)
Format
The meeting will consist of a number of invited and contributed talks, interspersed with facilitated discussion sessions. The total number of participants will be restricted to around 20 in order to encourage plenty of interaction.
Logistics
Travel
The meeting will take place at ASTRON headquarters in Dwingeloo, the Netherlands; refer to our website for travel information.
We can provide help with arranging transportation between ASTRON and Hoogeveen Railway Station. Please reach out using the contact details provided below.
Accommodation
A block booking has been made at Landhotel de Borken, which is within walking distance of the meeting venue and has bikes available to hire. Note number of rooms available is limited; they will be allocated on a first-come, first-served basis. The hotel will hold the block for us until 4 September.
Details on how to book at the special rate will be provided upon successful registration for the meeting.
Remote Participation
If you can't join us at ASTRON, you can participate in the meeting using Microsoft Teams. You'll need separate connection details for each day:
Wednesday
- Meeting ID: 395 970 882 76
- Passcode: cHA9H9
- Click to join
Thursday
- Meeting ID: 313 711 578 732
- Passcode: 9repxZ
- Click to join
Friday
- Meeting ID: 374 115 556 084
- Passcode: t5mjof
- Click to join