This Building Blocks project intends to extend the promotion of simple web services to simplify the task of discovering, accessing and using data from multiple sources. The investigators will promote the use of this system to manage data from the long tail of science and make it discoverable, removing it from the domain of "dark data". Long tail data will come from both funded partner centers and from collaborators. They will extend their approach of exposing data sets through web services to those managed by non-NSF data centers both within the US as well as international data sets by providing resources to stand up web services to expose the data holdings of other centers. A recurring theme in the EarthCube Domain Workshops was the need to simplify the workflows for sharing and discovery of data in geosciences. A significant amount of time is currently spent as "hunters and gatherers" of information and once finding that information to determine how to understand and use data from domains outside a given researcher?s area of expertise. The development of the web services building block will significantly change the way in which much of the preparatory work will be accomplished. This building block will also develop the ability to expose "dark data". The balance between the time spent on preparing and doing science will be reversed from the current state where the majority of time is spent in preparation and the minority of the time spent on doing the science. This will in itself have extremely broad impacts in geosciences research. The web services building blocks inherently enable horizontal integration across the geosciences with a resulting impact on the breadth of geosciences problems that can be addressed.
The proposed expansion of simple web services into the geosciences will fundamentally change the way geoscientists do their research, combine information from across disciplines and communicate their results to the public, policy makers and educators.Exposing such data will significantly add to the body of knowledge that can be brought to bear on geosciences problems. As problems become more and more complex, the diversity of data sets that must be considered and integrated for a better understanding of a vast range of geoscience problems will increase, and enhanced technologies and procedures will be required to synthesize and communicate the resulting knowledge between scientist and with the public. This building block is an effort to support that transition by engaging EarthCube cyberinfrastructure in developing, establishing and adopting international standards to allow geoscientists to focus on the science, thus increasing their productivity.
