Title: Enabling Volunteered Cloud Computing
Presenting Author: John Evans
Organization: Global Science and Technology

Abstract:
We are building mechanisms to facilitate "volunteered cloud computing" -- participation in large computations by users of commercial computing clouds. With coordination via a lightweight, fault-tolerant network protocol, participants can perform subtasks alongside whatever they're doing; donate machine time; or perform computations "interstitially" by taking advantage of granular billing mechanisms. By aggregating small slices of compute time across a large computing cloud, a significant computing resource can be harnessed on short notice and at zero cost for large parallel computing applications. By implementing these systems in the cloud, we can more easily scale them up for large computations; transfer large amounts of data between servers, clients, and archives; and reconfigure systems for complex code or data dependencies. We're investigating this technology concept with an emphasis on computing related to disaster risk management, including hazard assessment and warning, and improved decision support for response and recovery operations.