Proposal Number: 1242072 Institution: University of Delaware PI: D. White
This proposal requests funding to continue to provide information technology (IT) infrastructure support to the University-National Oceanographic Laboratory System (UNOLS) Office. The Ocean Information Center (OCEANIC) at the University of Delaware?s College of Marine and Earth Studies serves as a centralized location for the UNOLS information technology infrastructure, web server, mail servers, file repository and backend relational databases.
Broader Impact and Intellectual Merit: The Academic Fleet is well into its fourth decade of service to our nation's ongoing effort to study the vast majority of our planet that is covered by ocean. In a time of intense budgetary constraints and competing pressures on scarce federal resources, this Fleet must stress cost-effectiveness, efficiency and wise utilization of the taxpayer's dollars. The federal agency?s educational and scientific missions must be accessible to educators, policy makers and the public, and the maintenance of the UNOLS IT infrastructure directly contributes to this mission with regard to effective vessel scheduling and public outreach.
The College of Earth, Ocean and Environment (CEOE) Ocean Information Center (OCEANIC) provides information technology infrastructure support for the University-National Oceanographic Laboratory System (UNOLS) office. Support and assistance is provided in the form of web, database and mail servers as well as server and database administration, consulting and web-application development assistance. The servers and services are located and maintained at CEOE. This project consists of in-house information technology research and development which supports the modernization of the University-National Oceanographic Laboratory System (UNOLS) information technology infrastructure and interfaces. Web, mail and database servers are maintained and hosted in-house and made available in support of these projects. As new information, programming and server technologies emerge, they are researched, vetted and incorporated into the OCEANIC infrastructure in support of these efforts. Two new virtualization servers were acquired during this grant period and brought online in support of the UNOLS project sites. These systems allow us to host multiple virtualized project servers and provide failover and redundancy in the event of a single hardware server fault. The systems are routinely patched and updated to adjust to changing security requirements and external cyber attacks against them. Information relating to research vessel technologies that we encounter during the performance of our duties and research are shared publicly on the Research Vessels 'Tech Links' page as well as the OCEANIC Interns and Ocean Bytes blog sites as well as on social media sites such as Twitter. The tools and applications being developed at OCEANIC help improve research fleet safety and scientific effectiveness. This project provides a central repository of shipboard and scientific equipment currently in use, and facilitates communication concerning problems and maintenance issues amongst ship operators, funding agencies and research scientists.
