The DMSC strengthens collaboration and software opportunities

ABOVE: Tobias Richter, Data and Group Leader for Data Management at ESS and Head of BrightnESS Work Package 5 working at the newly opened DMSC in Copenhagen.

Data Management will be a vital component in handling the neutron test results, when the European Spallation Source goes into operation. The DMSC will not only bring project partners closer together. The Centre also aims to set new standards for using computers in neutron research.

COPENHAGEN – On 28 August 2016, the ESS Data Management and Software Centre (DMSC) celebrated its official opening in Copenhagen. The DMSC is responsible for the acquisition and analysis of the scientific data from the ESS neutron beam instruments. With the new office space properly inaugurated, its inhabitants predict that it will contribute significantly to the collaboration between ESS staff, BrightnESS participants and other visitors.

“We started moving into the new offices in May and the BrightnESS collaborators from the University of Copenhagen moved in just before summer. The new office has room for more staff, which means that we can now enjoy a closer physical collaboration. We also have space for our collaborators from the various areas of ESS; Integrated Control Systems, Detector Group and instruments,” says Tobias Richter, Head of BrightnESS Work Package 5, Real-Time Management of ESS Data and Group Leader for Data Management at ESS.

The work at the DMSC is divided into four different groups: Data Systems and Technologies, Data Management, Instrument Data, and Data Analysis and Modelling. This means that the teams sit in four different areas, although they have an open office space, which enables collaboration across the groups.

“Everything at the DMSC has to work as an integrated package and therefore everyone has to work together. Integration is key,” says Tobias Richter.  

The DMSC’s new offices are located in the Copenhagen Bio Science building (COBIS), on the north campus of the University of Copenhagen. The building houses many small companies and startups, which adds to the atmosphere and creates an interactive working environment. One of the benefits of the new office space is the increased communication, even with the partners who are not physically located in Copenhagen.

“The partners interact very much with each other across locations. We have regular Skype meetings and use several collaboration tools to maximise our work. We share a closer collaboration, now that the DMSC office is in place,” says Tobias Richter. 

International collaboration will support the DMSC

Work Package 5 of BrightnESS is occupied with data from the ESS detectors. The team tests data from reactors around world, such as the Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, USA. The team members look at data from existing facilities in order to see how they should manage the forthcoming ESS data and to make sure that the development is on the right path.

“Within BrightnESS, we are directly using our partner facilities, such as PSI in Switzerland and our UK partner STFC, which is testing for its neutron source ISIS. Collaboration with other spallation sources is critical for us. We get to test actual data from actual facilities, while our partners can use the results for their current work,” says Tobias Richter.  

The Work Package contains three focus areas to maximise the scientific output of the ESS though data management: creating a standard neutron event data stream for different detector types; creating a standard method for streaming meta-data for fast applied fields; and developing software to aggregate and make available the neutron event data and sample meta-data. Further, the Work Package includes advantages related to project management.

“The benefits of the Work Package includes reduced risks, closer collaborations with other neutron sources, such as PSI, and bringing in the expertise from partners like the University of Copenhagen and Elettra. In BrightnESS, we are on a challenging time scale, where everything needs to work correctly by a specific date. In this sense, BrightnESS provides a time plan that allows us to be ready on time, says Tobias Richter.

The DMSC team poses in front of the newly inaugurated offices at the University of Copenhagen.

Improved data management with computing technology

When the ESS is up and running it will have more neutrons and measure more samples than existing facilities do today. The data management team will therefore need a thorough understanding of the very large amount of data, in order to find out which parts of the data are worth further investigation.

“We need a lot of data in order to identify the best data for analysis and we need fast results. These large data amounts require a system for cataloguing and getting an overview of all the data, to help the process,” says Tobias Richter.

A special feature of the ESS data management team is that it is involved in data acquisition, which means reading out and refining all the data from the detectors. In most existing facilities, this task belongs in the electronics groups, but with the boron-based ESS detectors, it makes sense to place this task within data management.

“Helium detectors are simpler and come from decades of development and from a time where computers were not fast enough to process the data. With boron detectors, our software can look at the data even though the scientists need to change something during their tests. Using computers, you can actually replay the entire experiment,” says Tobias Richter.

The DMSC was legally formed as a division of the ESS in May 2013. Since then the original DMSC staff and those who have joined them later on, have focused on developing the control software, the data reduction software, and the initial data analysis software for the neutron beam instruments that will be installed at ESS in the early 2020’s.   

Read more about data management and software at ESS here.