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Posts Tagged ‘University of New Hampshire’

UNH Awarded $1.7M For Broadband Internet Mapping Project

Thursday, January 28th, 2010

The U.S. Department of Commerce has awarded the University of New Hampshire’s Geographically Referenced Analysis and Information Transfer (NH GRANIT) project approximately $1.7 million to manage a program that will inventory and map current and planned broadband coverage available to the state’s businesses, educators, and citizens. 

unhThe New Hampshire Broadband Mapping Program (NHBMP) is a coordinated, multi-agency initiative funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act through the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), and is part of a national effort to expand high-speed Internet access and adoption through improved data collection and broadband planning.

GRANIT, which is housed at the UNH Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans, and Space (EOS), serves as the statewide geographic information system (GIS) clearinghouse.

“The results of the mapping activity will be an important determinant in future broadband access across the state, which is important for all citizens in terms of economic development, education, health care, public health and safety, and quality of life issues,” says GRANIT director Fay Rubin of the Complex Systems Research Center at EOS.

The state’s nine regional planning commissions will collaborate with GRANIT on data collection and verification activities, as well as conduct regional broadband planning activities. Additional support will be provided by a variety of state agencies, including the Division of Economic Development, the Office of Energy and Planning, and the Public Utilities Commission.

Carol Miller

Carol Miller

“We are pleased to set this project in motion. It’s a great example of how collaboration between public and private agencies works for the betterment of all,” says Carol Miller, director of broadband technology at the New Hampshire Division of Economic Development. She adds, “In addition, we will be providing information that will help to develop and track the national broadband plan.”

The Southwest Region Planning Commission (SWRPC) based in Keene is taking the lead role among the regional planning commissions for the project. “This initiative comes at a time of challenge and represents a significant opportunity to address the infrastructure needs of our communities and our state so vital in maintaining a vibrant economy,” says Tim Murphy, executive director of SWRPC.

The project is comprised of two components: a two-year broadband availability inventory and mapping effort, and a four-year planning initiative.

The inventory will use service-area data collected from the 60-plus public and commercial entities, both landline and wireless, that provide broadband services in the state. These data, describing service availability, type, and technology, will help to identify areas of the state that are unserved or underserved by the current broadband infrastructure. Data will also be collected on broadband availability at individual community anchor institutions, including schools, libraries, medical/healthcare locations, public safety offices, and state, county, and municipal buildings. 

The planning component of the NHBMP will incorporate the information collected and the momentum generated by the mapping activities into regional broadband plans throughout New Hampshire. It will involve establishing regional broadband stakeholder groups to identify barriers to broadband deployment, promote collaboration with service providers, facilitate information sharing regarding the use of and demand for broadband services, and develop broadband plans for each region of the state. 

NTIA has now awarded 41 grants to states and U.S. territories totaling approximately $78 million under the program. In addition to NH, the most recent round of awards went to Iowa, Montana, Utah, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The agency expects to finish announcing awards under the program in early 2010. 

The data collected and compiled under the national program will be used to develop publicly available state-wide broadband maps and to inform the comprehensive, interactive, and searchable national broadband map that NTIA is required by the Recovery Act to create and make publicly available by February 17, 2011.

According to Rubin, the NHBMP is scheduled to deliver a preliminary assessment of areas of the state that are unserved or underserved by broadband to NTIA by this spring.

“We will be contacting agencies, organizations, businesses, and residents in the state and we hope that there will be a high degree of interest in and support for this effort. Collecting accurate and comprehensive data will be critical for the project’s success,” Rubin says.

The University of New Hampshire, founded in 1866, is a world-class public research university with the feel of a New England liberal arts college. A land, sea, and space-grant university, UNH is the state’s flagship public institution, enrolling 12,200 undergraduate and 2,200 graduate students.

NSF $1.2M Grant to Support Hanover-Plymouth-Manchester High Bandwidth Research and Education Network

Wednesday, September 16th, 2009

Plans for high speed linkages that connect Northern New Hampshire to Manchester and extend into additional networks in Northern New England received a major boost when the National Science Foundation (NSF) announced a $1.2 million grant to support building this fiber path.  The funds will create new linkages among higher education institutions in New Hampshire, including the University of New Hampshire, Plymouth State University and Dartmouth College to help support collaborative research and education initiatives regionally, nationally, and internationally.

broadband-1Funds are being awarded through the NSF’s EPSCoR (Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research) Office’s Research Infrastructure Improvement Program Track-2 grant (RII Track-2).  The University of New Hampshire, which hosts the New Hampshire EPSCoR Office, is the grant recipient.  The University System of New Hampshire operates the current network that serves its four institutions and provides Internet and connectivity services to the Community College System of New Hampshire, and several K-12 schools, libraries, public service centers, and public health and safety organizations across the state.  These funds will, in part, help advance larger efforts to develop a regional optical network that will have significantly greater bandwidth speed and help address current and future bandwidth demands. 

“This research and corresponding network development will thrust New Hampshire and the northeast region into the international research stage with the ability to collaborate with cyber-enabled tools and resources in ways that have not yet been possible,” said Scott Valcourt, UNH director of project management and consulting services for information technology and the New Hampshire principal investigator.  “That research will have other economic development and quality of life benefits for New Hampshire citizens.”

The grant is a result of collaborative work by multiple NSF EPSCoR states that helped form the Northeast Cyberinfrastructure Consortium (NECC) in 2006.  Officials in Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Delaware initiated two related efforts to identify and promote the shared use of research facilities across the region and assess and address cyber-infrastructure needs. The NSF EPSCoR grant, combined with the National Institutes of Health Centers of Biomedical Research Excellence (COBRE) Supplement grant award to Dartmouth in August 2009, adds research infrastructure in a region of the country where the lack of bandwidth presents a significant barrier to tapping regional and national resources. The COBRE Supplement will extend the core research network to include Keene State College.

“Many of our leading academic centers that are constrained by the current fiber capacity will benefit, including the Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans and Space at UNH, the Northern New England Computing Grid that is led by Dartmouth, and the Plymouth State University Meteorology Program,” said Tom Franke, the USNH chief information officer.  “The fiber optic path will also continue to the University of Vermont, creating another significant opportunity for research collaboration.”

The NECC states have created NEBC (North East Bioinformatics Collaborative), a virtual organization that facilitates research projects that require data analysis for large data sets. Pilot projects on issues such as algae blooms are planned and the regional network will enable participating states to collaborate, exchange students, and work together from remote locations by taking advantage of video conferencing and other high speed services not currently available. The majority of the funds will be used for 12 fiber strands from Manchester to Plymouth to Hanover, the electronic equipment to operate the fiber network, and support for student participants in the algae bloom studies taking place in the NECC states. 

The NSF established EPSCoR to assist states that traditionally have received lower levels of federal funding. Since New Hampshire became an EPSCoR jurisdiction in 2004, more than $15 million in EPSCoR research grants have been awarded by NSF, NASA, and the departments of energy and defense. NH EPSCoR is administered by the University of New Hampshire with oversight by a 14-member committee composed of representatives from industry, government and academia.

New Hampshire is WIRED Baby!

Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009

Just happened across some great new numbers from the University of New Hampshire’s Survey Center that showed that almost 90 percent of Granite State homes are wired to the Internet, making us one of the “most wired” states in the nation.

The poll found 87 percent of residents used the Internet at home and, of those, 50 percent said they used it for an hour or less a day while 37 percent reported using it for two or more hours a day.

computercartoon1

Forty-nine percent of residents said they used the Internet at work and, of those, 27 percent said they used it for an hour or less while 22 percent used it for two or more hours. Plus, 25 percent reported they had no Internet access at work and another 25 percent said they didn’t have a job.

Visit http://www.unh.edu/survey-center/news/pdf/gsp2009_spring_internet60109.pdf for details.

– Steve Boucher, Communications & Legislative Director