Computational Research Ecosystem for Scientific Collaboration on Ancient Topics (CRESCAT)

David Schloen, Principal Investigator, University of Chicago
Kathleen Morrison, Co-Principal Investigator, Sally and Alvin V. Shoemaker Professor of Anthropology, Department Chair, University of Pennsylvania
H. Birali Runesha, Co-Principal Investigator, Assistant Vice President for Research Computing, University of Chicago

The CRESCAT project aims to interconnect existing software tools to create a framework for multi-disciplinary collaborative research. This ecosystem spans the full research data life cycle of acquisition, integration, analysis, publication, and archiving. It provides a high-level intuitive interface to enable end users to work with their data in all stages of the life cycle without requiring cumbersome manual data transfers and transformations. Existing analytical capabilities will be augmented by scalable “engines” for network analysis and statistics. The resulting ecosystem is:

  • coherent, tightly integrating software tools and data formats within a single analytical framework;
  • open-ended, interconnecting existing tools while allowing the addition of new tools in the future;
  • non-exclusive, in no way preventing its component tools from participating in other ecosystems;
  • scalable, designed to handle large-scale data management, analysis, and visualization; and
  • sustainable, maintaining shared resources to meet common needs for software and technical support
CRESCAT NSF Poster, J. David Schloen and H. Birali Runesha

CRESCAT NSF Poster, J. David Schloen and H. Birali Runesha

OCHRE System Architecture

OCHRE System Architecture

Support for this project was provided by the National Science Foundation (NSF), SI2-SSI; A Computational Research Ecosystem for Scientific Collaboration on Ancient Topics (CRESCAT), Spanning the Full Data Life Cycle2015-2019.