Keynote Speaker 2: What´s in a Cloud? by Philip Sallis

Summary form only given. This talk considers the term Cloud as it relates to formations of moisture mass in the troposphere and also as it has become used when referring to remote data repositories and the technologies that facilitate them. The nature of cloud formations and their climate influencing dynamics forms part of ongoing research in climate science. Bringing precision to the dynamics of this work requires image processing algorithms based on edge geometric pattern recognition for topographical definition of cloud formations and sensing technology for determining their moisture mass composition. Some work in this area is described. The term Cloud in contemporary parlance has moved beyond the formations we observe in the troposphere to become synonymous with large off-site digital storage of data, whether it is in tabular, diagrammatic, image or video format. The term Big Data is often associated with Cloud in this context because of the availability for securely storing large amounts of data in a distributed and yet immediately accessible manner. It is obvious, because of the distant data storage facilities existing, why the term has been adopted for the technology underpinning distributed mass storage. The locations for these distributed facilities are out of immediate sight, or perhaps more imaginatively put, up in the sky, something like the clouds of Nature. Another use of the term cloud arises in the colloquial phrase Head in the Clouds, meaning lofty or speculative thoughts or actions. In this vein, the talk will reflect on the history of mass storage and consider the issues facing the future for data integrity, availability and security with the growing phenomenon of Cloud Technology, making some observations concerning professionalism, ethics and liability for scientists and engineers in professional practice.