Grid computing winners announced

A project to combat global terrorism is the winner of a nationwide grid computing competition.

Gokop Goteng's proposal 'Combating global terrorism with the world wide grid' was deemed outstanding by the judges of the British Computer Society (BCS ) and Grid Computing Now! competition.

Grid Computing Now! is the DTI-funded Knowledge Transfer Network (KTN) initiative focused on the development and deployment of grid computing services and applications among UK businesses.

The aim of the competition was to find projects that would demonstrate practical application of grid computing technologies that would help society.

The judges praised the Cranfield University PhD student's project for making full use of many aspects of grid computing. For example, utilising processing power to crunch real-time data in terms of CCTV footage and biometric data to identify potential high-risk incidents.

The judges went on to say his solution provides an environment in which different information sources and multidisciplinary teams – for example police, custom offices and transport industry – can link together and collaborate as one central mechanism to help combat terrorism.

Ian Osborne, Grid Computing Now! project manager told Computeractive that Intellect, the UK hi-tech association, will be offering help and guidance for Gokop in order to develop his idea.

"This will include practical advice on who to approach to realise the idea and technical advice on the grid applications. He has created an incredibly compelling solution and we will endeavor to help him progress this idea further, " he said.

Second prize went to Zacharias Joubert, a student at Hull University for his entry 'SpaceGrid'.

This looked at the problem of Near Earth Objects (NEOs). These are asteroids, comets and large meteoroids whose orbit intersects Earth's and which pose a potential collision danger; an NEO is thought to have been responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs.

Some form of low-cost early warning system is needed and this entry could go some way to providing this.

It explains how grid technology can enable astronomers to measure the shadow that an astronomical body throws on earth when it passes through the arc of a star.

This causes a drop in the brightness of the star and by using a statistical algorithm, new NEOs can be identified.