EARTHCUBE: SEEKING COMMUNITY CONVERGENCE ON GEOSCIENCE CYBERINFRASTRUCTURE ARCHITECTURE

Concrete decisions about the technical architecture of NSF EarthCube cannot be made until its governance organization is in place (fall, 2014), but work is underway to promote consensus on the nature of the required architecture specification and how it will be used. The scope of the architecture must be determined through broad engagement of the earth science research and education community to meet their needs. EarthCube will be a system of systems, and must incorporate competing approaches, existing operational systems both within and outside of the NSF geoscience portfolio. A workshop held in June 2014 brought community members together to discuss EarthCube architecture and accelerate convergence. Several points of general agreement emerged. The EarthCube architecture should be a high level view of the system that can be used as a guide to assess the level of compatibility and interoperability of candidate technologies. The architecture framework can be used to identify gaps in capabilities and to establish development priorities. As an NSF system of systems operating in the context of a larger earth science research infrastructure, the architecture will need to focus on the gateways (interfaces and information exchange agreements) that connect components and enable interoperability. EarthCube components should be modular and loosely coupled, reducing the barriers to plugging in new components. The architecture should be viewed as an evolutionary artefact that will undergo continuous change to adapt to new research techniques and priorities and technology innovation. A 'top down' design framework is useful to guide system development and management and assure that the 'building blocks' work together, but the design must be responsive to 'bottom up' input based on actual practice that emerges in the community. The business model for funding and maintaining production infrastructure should be treated as distinct from that supporting technology research and cutting edge development. These recommendations will inform the EarthCube Standing Committee for Technology and Architecture that will be in place in October, 2014, tasked with developing the EarthCube architecture framework.