• NCAR Annual Report
• CISL report
• EOL report
• ESSL report
• RAL report
• SERE report

The Cyberinfrastructure Strategic Initiative and the Community Data Portal

		This is a snapshot of the new Community Data Portal (CDP) homepage, which now reflects a more thematic interface to our broad digital asset holdings. We are currently developing a next-generation Semantic Web-based system, and this thematic approach is one step along that path. The CDP has now grown into what is commonly referred to as a "science gateway," where data, models, tools, and knowledge are managed and made available for community access. The CDP serves as a primary foundation for our development of an Earth System Knowledge Environment (ESKE).

The NCAR Cyberinfrastructure Strategic Initiative (CSI) was originally proposed as a collection of strategic activities that spanned data and knowledge management, collaboration environments, and advancing our web presence. Having accomplished our goals and realizing production capabilities in the latter two, our primary focus is now on advancing data and knowledge environments and aggressively developing our opportunity space in this and related areas.

The CSI effort currently funds our core foundational thrust, the Community Data Portal (CDP) along with a collection of related strategic priorities and opportunity development. Our overarching goals are to build the cyberinfrastructure, integrate and extend the Information Technology, develop the critical relationships and projects with scientific and educational projects, and foster the development of human resources and culture such that we can effectively develop our ESKE.

The CDP is aimed at developing and delivering innovative cyberinfrastructure that provides a shared technology base and facility for data and knowledge management for a broad set of digital holdings across UCAR, NCAR, and UOP. The basic idea is to develop and deliver the foundations for building science gateways and knowledge environments, including a broad spectrum of functionality spanning data search and discovery, semantic organization, catalogs and metadata browsing, support for virtual organizations, data download and upload, publishing, digital preservation, and analysis and visualization services.

The CSI thus plays an important role in supporting NCAR's strategic priorities of "Engaging a broader and more diverse community in the atmospheric and geosciences," "Developing and providing advanced services and tools," and "Creating an Earth system knowledge environment."

The more significant FY2007 highlights include:

• Data, modeling, and technology project support:
  In FY2007, we continued to support the spectrum of existing projects and began work on a number of new ones. This included IPCC, the THORPEX Interactive Grand Global Ensemble (TIGGE), the NCAR GIS Strategic Initiative, HAO's TGCM project, the MILAGRO field project, ACME-07, the Cooperative Arctic Data and Information Service (CADIS), the CGD Celtic Niwot Ridge effort, the Earth System Modeling Framework (ESMF), the NSF Earth System Curator (ESC) project, the IHOPE/ARCHEOMEDES project, TOPSE, and the Google Earth Opportunity Fund effort.

• Technology base advancement:
  In addition to all of the ongoing and new specific-project work, we also engaged in R&D in semantic interfaces, developed a new thematic interface to our CDP holdings, held meetings with our most active users, upgraded our access control systems to accommodate ESMF requirements, collaborated with Unidata in integrating security systems with Unidata software, and developed new web-based visualization capabilities that have been deployed (initially) for the TGCM project.

• World Meteorological Organization Information System (WMO-WIS) support:
  In FY2007 the CSI also supported collaborative efforts to develop the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) Information System (WIS), with CISL staff serving on several WMO committees and expert teams, including the WIS metadata group (IPET-MI), the WIS data and codes group (ET-CTS), the WIS global federation group (ET-WISC), and the WMO Intercommission Coordination Group (ICG-WIS). We provided technology, support, federation, and coordination in support of a successful WMO WIS conference and demonstration in Seoul, Korea in November 2006. WMO-WIS is slated to be a major contributor to the Global Earth Observing System of Systems (GEOSS) effort.

• THORPEX Interactive Grand Global Ensemble (TIGGE) support:
  CSI-supported staff engaged in the design, software engineering, and deployment of core TIGGE systems that are based in large part on underlying CDP technology.

• Opportunity development:
  The CSI successfully developed funding opportunities for the Chronopolis effort (funded by the U.S. Library of Congress) and the CADIS project (NSF funded). We continued to work with EOL and other partners to develop support for the Virtual Operations Center (VOC) effort as well.

 

Overall, the CSI has impact ranging from local to global, with a solid track record of building important new collaborations. In FY2008 we will continue to pursue opportunity development in the areas of science gateway and portal development, semantic and knowledge systems, integrated data management, analysis, and visualization environments, and digital preservation initiatives. The initiative now has a large operational responsibility, and we will continue to work with a large number of projects and customers to continue good service, learn from it, and evolve our capabilities accordingly. From a technology standpoint, we will deploy a major upgrade of the overall software base that will include advanced virtual organization capabilities, new semantic interfaces, enhanced metrics reporting tools and infrastructure, and features for persistence and disaster recovery. We will continue our contributions to the WMO-WIS effort, working with international partners to realize our vision of globally federated data and knowledge environments. Overall, an overarching theme in the upcoming year is one of cross-project integration in the ESKE context—with an emphasis on establishing ESKE support foundations.

This project is supported through NCAR Strategic Initiative funding and NSF Core funding.