Sustainable infrastructure for the improved usability and archivability of research software on the example of the porous-media-simulator Dumux

• Applicants: Dr. David Boehringer, since 3/2018; Professor Dr. Bernd Flemisch; Sibylle Hermann
• Subject Area: Hydrogeology, Hydrology, Limnology, Urban Water Management, Water Chemistry, Integrated Water Resources Management ; Mechanics
• Term: from 2018 to 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 391049448

The primary objectives of the project are to improve the usability of the research software Dumux for first-time users, advanced users and developers, as well as to advance the archivability of Dumux-based code together with an ordinary publication such that the therein mentioned simulation results can be reproduced. These objectives are to be achieved in a sustainable manner by enhancing and using the well-established infrastructure services ViPlab (the virtual programming lab of the University of Stuttgart) and OPUS (the institutional publication repository of the University of Stuttgart) and by developing appropriate interfaces to and between these services. Since the developed components will not be bound exclusively to Dumux, they will help to reach our secondary objective of providing the necessary infrastructure to improve the usability and archivability of other research software projects.Dumux is a free and open-source simulator for flow and transport processes in porous media based on the Distributed and Unified Numerics Environment DUNE. It has been successfully applied to, for example, greenhouse gas and CO2 storage, radioactive waste disposal, environmental remediation problems, transport of therapeutic agents through biological tissue, fractured porous media, and subsurface-atmosphere coupling. Dumux is published under an open-source license for almost ten years. However, the usability of Dumux is limited due to a possibly cumbersome installation process and the fact that already rather basic adaptations of parameters usually require changing the C++ source code. Moreover, the archivability of code based on Dumux and the reproducibility of simulation results obtained with such a code is not supported currently.The usability of and accessibility to the Dumux research software and apps built on Dumux software will be improved from three perspectives. Firstly, this is the perspective of a scientific peer or other entities with scientific interests in the software accompanying a published article. Secondly, users of the Dumux research software, and thirdly, advanced Dumux users and developers. Containerized apps will ease access by developers and advanced users directly, and indirectly improve the usability as backend for the ViPLab frontend, and the archivability in the library database, being linked with research data or a published article. The ViPLab frontend will be integrated into the OPUS service to assure public access to research software and a highly configurable and well-documented Dumux application for demonstration and teaching purposes. OPUS will host the ViPLab plug-in and store application containers. We intend to simplify deploying a publication with accompanying code in a well-documented process. Thus, it will be possible to publish and conviently access publications with article, software, and associated research data, and even reproduce simulation results in an online interface.

• DFG Programme: Research data and software (Scientific Library Services and Information Systems)
• Ehemaliger Antragsteller: Dr. Thomas Richter, until 3/2018