Originally published in our March 2025 newsletter (Issue 26)
Dr. Casey Burleyson is an Earth Scientist at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory where he’s worked since 2014. He has a B.S. in Meteorology and a Ph.D. in Atmospheric Sciences from North Carolina State University and a M.S. in Applied Physics from Columbia University. A meteorologist by training, Casey’s scientific work focuses on understanding how weather variability and extreme events impact energy systems. Casey is an advocate for open science and is the PI for the MultiSector Dynamics – Living, Intuitive, Value-adding, Environment (MSD-LIVE). MSD-LIVE is a collaborative open science platform for the MultiSector Dynamics community.
Casey led the brainstorming and development efforts for MSD-LIVE starting in 2019. The goal of the project is to leverage cutting-edge cloud technology to facilitate collaboration across the MSD community. As in many other communities, MSD researchers struggled with data and code management – from managing storage to making it easy for others to find and re-use data and code. However, the extraordinary diversity of MSD research, encapsulated in the “multi-” descriptor that applies to basically every aspect of MSD science, exacerbated these challenges. To meet the unique needs of the MSD community, Casey and his team developed MSD-LIVE – a cloud-based, flexible, and scalable data and advanced computing platform that enables MSD researchers to document and archive their data, run their models and analysis tools, and share their data, software, and multi-model workflows.
Built on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud, MSD-LIVE is anchored around a centralized data repository that project teams can use to document, archive, and share their data. Since the v1 release of MSD-LIVE in August of 2022, 240 active users have used the platform to archive over 130 datasets covering topics spanning electricity infrastructure siting, water rights, and projections of electricity demand. MSD-LIVE datasets have been downloaded almost 1000 times since the start of 2024. MSDLIVE is also leveraging the cloud computing capabilities in AWS to host on-demand, interactive Jupyter notebooks to train new users to understand and run canonical MSD models like the Global Change Analysis Model (GCAM). During the GCAM annual meeting in 2024, MSD-LIVE supported nearly 150 people running components of the GCAM model in real-time on the AWS cloud. MSD-LIVE’s Jupyter notebooks have been used over 1700 times in the last year.
Casey loves the collaborative, community-oriented nature of the MSD-LIVE project and leading the team building the platform: “MSD-LIVE is a great example of technology meeting the moment. The extent to which the platform has been adopted by the community shows that the tools we’re building are solving real challenges faced by MSD researchers. All credit goes to the team of innovative, mission-focused software engineers building MSD-LIVE.”