PRAGMA is an open, international initiative to establish sustained collaborations and advance the use of the computational grid among a community of investigators at the leading research institutions around the Pacific Rim. Australia has been a PRAGMA participant since its inception. Our organisations share common goals with the major HPC institutes in the of Asia Pacific region.

The first goal of PRAGMA was to establish a community of researchers and technologists, that will facilitate routine use of the Grid for advancing science across institutional and international boundaries. Both QPSF and APAC share that common goal and additionally are actively working towards PRAGMA's other significant goal: to promote and support Grid-enabled and e-Science applications. QPSF and APAC will co-host 10th PRAGMA workshop in Queensland, Australia.

QPSF has been working to bring Grid practices to regional areas, to local industry, and particularly to bring its power to bear on societal concerns such as the sustainable uses of coastal zones: these are often the most contested locations for human endeavours, with collisions of natural human interest, commercial activities, R&D agendas and conservation concerns. The future of the Great Barrier Reef, offshore from the proposed location in Townsville, crystallizes such concerns poignantly. Hence the theme: "bringing the Grid to coastal zones". This has two aims, which echo those enunciated by NCHC for PRAGMA-5. The first is to re-emphasise the driving forces for HPC and Grid developments in the context on real-world applications. "Second, a sustainable Grid is based on its realization and usefulness, which ultimately leads to an on-line Grid-enabled service".