From left to right: RENCI’s Casey Averill, Brian Blanton and John McGee

When hurricanes or tropical storms head toward the North Carolina coast, RENCI’s Dell PowerEdge cluster, called Hatteras, springs into action, producing finely-detailed models of possible storm tracks and resulting coastal storm surge several times a day.

A recent upgrade to Hatteras means more capacity to produce  a large number of storm surge forecast ensembles and high-resolution models in less than three hours. The effort to upgrade Hatteras was documented in a recent case study developed by Dell.

Read the case study.

For more on RENCI’s coastal modeling work, see Coastal Hazards Modeling web page.

Forty-five students from around the globe spent the last three weeks in classrooms at RENCI in Chapel Hill and at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS) at the University of California, Santa Barbara, learning the software and technology skills needed for open, collaborative, and reproducible synthesis research.

Participants and instructors in the RENCI portion of the Open Science for Software course pose for a group photo on the final day of class.

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With many large data sets, place is an important component. From the emergency manager looking for the best evacuation route to the historian trying to understand urban development patterns over the years, people rely on geographically referenced data to meet a variety of research, business, and government needs.

RENCI’s Geoanalytics platform provides intuitive, map-based visualizations to help transform data into decisions. Among other applications, this free, open source software has been used to inform disaster response, study the spread of disease, and increase the accessibility of public records.

To learn more, read the RENCI Geoanalytics White Paper or visit the Geoanalytics@RENCI website.

CHAPEL HILL, NC – REACH NC, a Web portal that connects businesses, developers, government officials, other researchers and citizens to thousands of experts working in higher education and research institutions throughout North Carolina, now helps users find university assets and resources across the state through a new tool called the REACH NC Resource Finder. Read more

A nationwide team that includes researchers from the Renaissance Computing Institute at UNC Chapel Hill (RENCI) and North Carolina State University will demonstrate how innovative cyber-physical systems can be used to prevent cyber attacks on power grids as part of the SmartAmerica Challenge and Expo, June 11 in Washington, D.C. Read more