Grants and Contributions:

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Title:
High performance computing framework for GCM-driven climate change simulation with the routing model WATROUTE
Agreement Number:
EGP2
Agreement Value:
$12,500.00
Agreement Date:
May 10, 2017 -
Organization:
Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada
Location:
Manitoba, CA
Reference Number:
GC-2017-Q1-00551
Agreement Type:
Grant
Report Type:
Grants and Contributions
Additional Information:

Grant or Award spanning more than one fiscal year. (2017-2018 to 2018-2019)

Recipient's Legal Name:
Henry, Christopher (The University of Winnipeg)
Program:
Engage Plus Grants for Universities
Program Purpose:

Manitoba Hydro's resource planning process is influenced by a variety of factors including water supply andx000D
electrical energy demand. As a result, understanding the sensitivity of planning decisions to future streamflowx000D
scenarios are important to their integrated resource planning process. Streamflow scenarios can be developedx000D
by combining global climate model simulated runoff values with the WATROUTE routing model for thex000D
Nelson-Churchill Watershed. The routing model is implemented in WATROUTE, the routing component ofx000D
the Canadian Hydrological Model (CHARM) suite of programs. Further, WATROUTE is the computationalx000D
bottleneck for the streamflow simulation processes, incurring long runtimes, especially when projecting manyx000D
years into the future. Thus, finding ways of significantly reducing the runtime of WATROUTE is of greatx000D
importance to Manitoba Hydro. Moreover, the parallel nature of the routing model is an ideal fit for executionx000D
on the massively parallel processors inherent in graphics processing units (GPUs), which have recently becomex000D
available for general-purpose scientific computing. This work is an extension of the results from an Engagex000D
Grant with Manitoba Hydro, where the aim was to create a highly-parallel, GPU-based,x000D
high-performance-computing implementation of the WATROUTE routing model to assist Manitoba Hydro'sx000D
resource planning process. Tremendous progress was achieved toward this aim through significant reduction inx000D
the routing model runtime. As a result, the aim of this Engage Plus Grant is to pursue the reduction ofx000D
WATROUTE's overall runtime using GPUs, produce a release ready version of WATROUTE, explore thex000D
application of WATROUTE to datasets previously too large to process, and investigate the use ofx000D
WATROUTE on systems with multiple GPUs. Benefits realized by this work may also have a positive impactx000D
on the MEC-Surface and Hydrology System (MESH) and the Canadian Regional Climate Model, as both usex000D
WATROUTE.