Speaker
Description
The Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC), the largest optical and infrared telescope in operation, is a highly complex technological infrastructure whose daily operation, spread across numerous subsystems and technical domains, produces a large volume of technical and scientific data that grows steadily in volume, velocity and variety. Part of this data resides in isolated silos and heterogeneous formats, whose integration and exploitation can be extended much further through a Data Lake that unifies them and unlocks their value.
As part of the GTC's digital transformation, the Data Lake continuously ingests live data from all silos, incorporates their historical record and organises them into successive layers, from raw data to curated data ready for analysis and exploitation, with scalable and versioned storage. Its central task is to unify and integrate the isolated,
heterogeneous silos so that access and query can be performed in a democratised way, with a common language and in a secure and traceable manner. Within the development of a Data Management Plan (DMP), the GTC is advancing towards the FAIR principles (findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable data), the construction of a data map
and catalogue that give visibility to the whole, and the formalisation of data contracts that ensure quality and stability between data producers and consumers.
In this way, both the historical record and the live data from all sources become available online, accessible and ready for use, within reach of operations, engineering and science in a democratised way, laying the foundation for developing the telescope's analytical
and learning capabilities. Along these lines, the collaboration with the Spanish Supercomputing Network (RES), hosted at CESGA, synchronises technical and scientific data and supports their large-scale analysis and exploitation for the extraction of valuable knowledge, in order to optimise operations and improve the performance of the GTC and, ultimately, enhance the quality of its scientific data.
Beyond technology, the ultimate goal is a cultural shift around data, one in which it is understood as a shared and valued asset in the service of the telescope's science and operations.