The project will 1) significantly increase research productivity in the Earth science modeling community, 2) enable the effective use of the existing Sensor Web data and Earth Observations through open Web interfaces and metadata standards, 3) foster collaborations among Earth system modelers, geospatial information scientists, and information technologists, and 4) enhance infrastructure for Earth science research and education. CyberConnector will free scientists from the laborious preparation of model inputs and release of model outputs. It will automatically process the Earth Observation data into the right products in the right form needed for Earth Systems Model initialization, validation, and inter-comparison.
This project developes an EarthCube building block, called CyberConnector, for facilitating the automatic preparation and feeding of both historic and near-real time Earth Observation customized data and on-demand derived products into Earth science models. will automatically process the EO data into the right products in the right form needed for ESM initialization, validation, and inter-comparison. It can support many different ESMs through its standard interfaces under a unified framework. CyberConnector can also automatically serve the model outputs in interoperable forms through standard data services to facilitate rapid inter-model comparison and support the societal applications of the model outputs. Recent EarthCube end-user workshops indicate the proposed capabilities of the CyberConnector are at the top of the wish lists of multiple Earth science communities. To achieve these capabilities, this project leverages the online availability of huge volume of EO data at EO cyberinfrastructure of NSF (e.g., Unidata, NEON), other federal agencies (NASA, NOAA, USGS), and international EO organizations (e.g., CEOS members), advancements in standard-based geospatial web service and sensor web technologies, and successful cyber-systems built by the investigators of this proposal and others (e.g., GeoBrain, SEPS, GEOSS, and CWIC). The proposed project will closely collaborate with other EarthCube building block teams and end-user communities. The ISO geospatial data and metadata standards and standard-based geospatial web service, workflows, and sensor web technologies are the foundation for this project.The Cloud-Resolving Model (CRM), the Community Multi-scale Air Quality Model (CMAQ), the Finite Volume Coastal Ocean Model (FVCOM), and the Grassland and Agroecosystem Dynamics Model (CENTURY) will be used as examples in this project to test, validate, and demonstrate the capabilities and functionality of CyberConnector.The CyberConnector approach is a general one that can support many different Earth system models through the standard interfaces and the geospatial processing model (GPM) mechanism
