Advanced Cyberinfrastructure Investments Addressing Earth Science Challenges

Abstract:

The National Science Foundation supports infrastructure development and research into Big Data challenges as part of its long-term cyberinfrastructure strategy. This strategy highlights the critical need to leverage and partner with other agencies, resources and service providers to the U.S. research community. The current cyberinfrastructure and research activities within NSF support advanced technology development, pilot demonstrations of new capabilities for the scientific community in general, and integration and interoperability of data resources across the Geoscience community. These activities include the Data Infrastructure Building Blocks, Big Data and EarthCube programs, among others. Investments are competitively solicited; the resulting portfolio of high performance computing, advanced information systems, new software capabilities, analytics and modeling supports a range of science disciplines. This presentation provides an overview of these research programs, highlighting some of the key investments in advanced analytics, coupled modeling, and seamless collaboration. Examples related to the geosciences, computer-aided discovery and hypothesis generation are highlighted.