Hydrology@Home: a distributed volunteer computing framework for hydrological research and applications

Abstract

Abstract Web-based distributed volunteer computing enables scientists to constitute platforms that can be used for computational tasks by using potentially millions of computers connected to the internet. It is a widely used approach for many scientific projects, including the analysis of radio signals for signs of extraterrestrial intelligence and determining the mechanisms of protein folding. User adoption and clients' dependence on the desktop software present challenges in volunteer computing projects. This study presents a web-based volunteer computing framework for hydrological applications that requires only a web browser to participate in distributed computing projects. The framework provides distribution and scaling capabilities for projects with user bases of thousands of volunteers. As a case study, we tested and evaluated the proposed framework with a large-scale hydrological flood forecasting model.