Annual Research Platforms and Portals (RPP) Progress Report

 

RPP Progress Report submission period

Start	Deadline
September 26, 2023	November 7, 2023, at 11:59 p.m. Eastern Standard Time Extension of this deadline is not possible

The Research Platforms and Portals (RPP) application process allows Principal Investigators (PIs) to request multi-year allocations, up to 3 years. 

Awarded multi-year projects do not need to submit a new application every year but are required to complete a mandatory annual progress report. The lead PI will be notified by email with instructions for the information required and the submission process.

If the annual report for your project is not received by the deadline, then your RPP allocation for the current year will not be renewed.

These reports are essential to ensure that the limited computational resources offered by the Federation are being used effectively and efficiently. 

The report also provides an opportunity for projects to identify any issues they have encountered (e.g., funding delays, HQP transition or development challenges) which the Federation may be able to help alleviate via our support staff expertise.

 

Information requested in the RPP Progress Report online form

In the online form on CCDB, PIs with awarded multi-year RPPs will be asked to answer the questions listed below. The form also allows PIs to attach a document (PDF format only) if needed.

The reporting period is April 1 to October 1, 2023.

 

Q1. Operational status

Please provide an update on the status of your platform or portal. Include an update of the current status relative to your submitted plan, any upcoming development and the team assembled to develop and operate the platform. If applicable, also identify any particular successes in deployment.

Options: 

• Planning
• Prototyping
• In production
• Other (please explain)

 

Q2. Issues

If any, please identify any ongoing issues preventing efficient deployment or operations.

 

Q3. Research outcomes

Provide a list of research publications or other contributions (e.g., conference presentations, patents, etc.) enabled by the platform or portal in the last year. We are interested in any publications and research outcomes that the platform or portal enables. Many platforms and portals provide services that are critically relied upon by researchers around the world. These researchers should acknowledge the platform or portal in their publications and those publications should be reflected in the provided list.

 

Q4. Significant changes in resource projections

If you foresee a significant change in your needs for the coming year, please identify the change and the reason for the change. In particular, if you need more resources than originally requested, it is important that you justify this change. There is no guarantee that you will receive additional resources but we will try our best to accommodate well-justified requests where possible.

 

Q5. Usage table

Provide usage details in the table below. Please explain in the textbox whether your users need to create a permanent account to register to your platform or portal, or whether they can use it anonymously. 

Provide counts both of the unique users and the total number of platform or portal accesses since the previous year’s progress report (or since the start of the award) and identify growth over that period. “Canadian Users” refers to any user based at a Canadian institution. The data collection period will usually represent the usage since the last progress report or the previous year. If this is the first progress report for your project, it will represent the number of users since the award was made.

 

 

Q6. Training and Outreach

Provide the total number of HQP directly engaged in projects utilizing the provided computational resources through the use of your platform and across academic levels. 

 

 

Q7. General comments
If you have any other comments that you would like to include, add them in the text box or attach a PDF file using the browser button.

 

Review process for multi-year projects

Once the progress report is completed and reviewed, the science score of the original RPP application is inserted into the normal allocation process, together with any requested updates to the original resource request. All new and continuing platforms and portals are then allocated through the normal process.  

Although we strive to keep the allocations consistent from year-to-year, compute resources awarded may be scaled based on our ability to meet the demand. Requests may also be scaled depending on the information provided in the progress report.

The progress report is reviewed by Federation staff. Particular items considered by the review team include:

1. Creation of the development team.
2. Development effort with prototypes in operation.
3. Identification of issues and challenges that have been encountered, and plans for mitigation including revisions to the project plan and schedule.
4. Evidence of uptake through preliminary usage statistics.
5. Evidence of continuous usage. Number of hits, number of users, total downloads/uploads, storage utilization, etc.
6. Evidence of marketing effort.
7. User breakdown between Canadian and international users.
8. Research outcomes associated with the platform (for example, number of papers acknowledging or citing the gateway).
9. Usage (compute, storage and cloud) within 50% of the predicted estimates. Usage below this limit may result in a prorated cut to the next year’s allocation.
10. Expected changes in support levels from the Federation. In particular, requests for significant increases in Federation support need to be justified.

 

Acceptable changes

Some changes to projected resources are allowed in the annual RPP Progress Report without having to submit a new application. These changes include:

• A 10% increase of PROJECT, NEARLINE and/or dCache storage, up to a maximum of 50 TB of additional storage based on the amount requested in your RPP application. The additional storage resources requested may be fully, partially or not allocated based on resource constraints and storage utilization information.
• A 10% increase in compute and storage cloud resources;
• PIs are encouraged to inform us if their projects require fewer quantities than originally requested so that limited resources can be redistributed to ensure optimal utilization.