National Integrated Cyberinfrastructure Initiative uses big data for scientific development

South Africa needs sophisticated cyberinfrastructure to support research and innovation in the country, mitigate against natural disasters, enable the country the play in the 4th industrial revolution space, and help the private sector, academia and entities make decisions that are data-driven.

In 2005, the Department of Science and Innovation (DSI), at that time the Department of Science and Technology, therefore established three entities, the Centre for High Performance Computing (CHPC), the South African Research Network (SANReN) and the Data Intensive Research Initiative of South Africa (DIRISA), all of which started operating in 2007.

The three entities started operating as an integrated system in 2016, as the National Integrated Cyberinfrastructure Initiative (NICIS).  The initiative is intended to promote scientific and industrial development through the provision of high-performance computing capability, high-speed network capacity and a national research data infrastructure, laterally integrated into globally connected systems and hierarchically structured as a local system that provides seamless access to the research, development, innovation community and industry.

NICIS has two main sites – the Rosebank Campus of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in Cape Town, where most of the data infrastructure is located, and most of the CHPC staff work, and the CSIR's Pretoria Campus, where some of the infrastructure and most of the DIRISA and SANReN staff are based.  As a system that integrates cyberinfrastructure, NICIS links equipment and services from all over the country.  It has Tier 2 (data and high-performance) facilities that are based at universities and network infrastructure around the country.

Headed by Dr Happy Sithole, the NICIS enables research in health, energy, climate and weather forecasting, engineering and design fields, astronomy, high-energy physics and many other fields.  Every large-scale project that requires computer intensive, high-speed networks and big data analytics depends on NICIS.

More than 90% of NICIS funding comes from the DSI, amounting to close to R1 billion over a Medium Term Expenditure Framework cycle.