This EarthCube enterprise conceptual architecture approach looks to develop a data-driven and human-centric EarthCube enterprise architecture for achieving the goal of EarthCube as a community-driven activity to transform the conduct of geoscience research and education. The proposed EarthCube enterprise architecture will have geoscientists and domain experts at its center and facilitate them to communicate and collaborate through data sharing, and ultimately bring geosciences forward in a holistic fashion. This project seeks to design a conceptual architecture that can bring geoscientists, computing scientists, and social scientists together to collaborate on networks of data, technology, applications, business models, and stakeholders. The design approach is guided by the following principles. It designs a new architecture as well as operational procedures for achieving the architecture based on comprehensive review and assessment of current enterprise architectures. Second, it suggests several important mechanisms to cross the disciplinary chasms, as EarthCube seeking to harmonize the geosciences communities? diverse approaches. Third, it proposes methods for forming collaborative networks of data, tools, standards and people as supported by geoscience cyberinfrastructure technology. Finally, the proposed project incorporates the concept of collaborative networks for maturing the conceptual design of the EarthCube enterprise architecture by including academia, agencies, industry, and other organizations as autonomous participants that continuously seek common ground for collectively improving geosciences.
The proposed EarthCube enterprise conceptual design will be validated through the EarthCube workshops, research coordination networks, building blocks, and other venues. The Federation of Earth Science Information Partners (ESIP) will provide validation from many NSF and non-NSF funded projects. The project will be sustained and make a long standing impact in geoscience communities as well as the geoscience cyberinfrastructure communities with a scalable, interoperable, sustainable, and evolvable conceptual architecture
