Limpopo Leader - University of Limpopo

Turfloop To Host New
Hi-Tech Regional Centre
with these and more capabilities is soon to be installed on
the Turfloop campus of the University of Limpopo.
We’re not talking about ‘thumb sucks’ here. In the 1980s,
there were supposedly computer-calculated predictions
about the spread of HIV/Aids in sub-Saharan Africa which
showed that most of the region would be catastrophically
depopulated by the late 1990s. Other predictions, this time
done on computers by reputable actuarial scientists, proved
to be much more accurate, and the trends that were predicted
have very much come to pass. The key explanation
for the variation lies in the data that were fed into the
computers in the first place. Coupled with the data was the
availability of skilled human resources to programme the
computers adequately and to ‘read’ the results.
Sophisticated data and sophisticated expertise: that’s what
the Regional Centre for Spatial Analysis and Modelling
(C-SAM, for short) at Turfloop will deal in and produce.
Let’s start with the data. Channelled into the Turfloop C-SAM
will be a wide variety of data support from various sources:
The Applied Centre for Climate and Earth System Studies
(ACCESS); the South African Department of Science and
Technology’s Global Change Grand Challenge Research Plan
(GCGCRP); a great deal of geographical and meteorological
data from EUMET in western Europe and GEONET in the
Americas; the SAEON platform which hosts data from the
South African Risk and Vulnerability Atlas, the South African
Earth Observation system, and a prototype World Data
Centre for Biodiversity and Human Health in Africa (WDCBHH);
the CSIR Built Environment and Geospatial Analysis
Framework (GAP-3); and the CSIR’s ‘Working for Water’
project that monitors the environmental impacts, especially
regarding water quality, in the areas of Limpopo province
experiencing rapid mining and industrial development.
Imagine a super computer
Imagine the possibilities: a computer that can
predict the impact of global warming and population growth
on our natural resources well into the future. What the
human challenges will be; what the water and food demands
will be in relation to the ability of the land to produce them;
and much more. Well, such computers exist – and a facility
We don’t have to be rocket scientists to realise the enormous
research and intervention potential that can be derived from
permutations of all this data, or specific sections of it. Taken
together, it represents the raw material for looking into the
future and finding the most appropriate responses to the
dramatic changes that almost certainly await us.
‘It’s extremely exciting stuff,’ says Professor Dirk Wessels,
local co-ordinator of the South African end of the VLIR-UOS
Belgian connection that links the University of Limpopo with
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