SVALBARD INTEGRATED ARCTIC EARTH OBSERVING SYSTEM (SIOS): FACILITATING EASY ACCESS TO MULTIDISCIPLINARY ARCTIC DATA THROUGH THE BROKERING APPROACH.

Abstract:

Environmental and climate changes are important elements of our global challenges. They are observed at a global scale and in particular in the Arctic. In order to give better estimates of the future changes, the Arctic has to be monitored and analyzed by a multi-disciplinary observation system that will improve Earth System Models. The best chance to achieve significant results within a relatively short time frame is found in regions with a large natural climate gradient, and where processes sensitive to the expected changes are particularly important. Svalbard and the surrounding ocean areas fulfil all these criteria. The vision for SIOS is to be a regional observational system for long term acquisition and proliferation of fundamental knowledge on global environmental change within an Earth System Science perspective in and around Svalbard. SIOS will systematically develop and implement methods for how observational networks are to be construed. The distributed SIOS data management system (SDMS) will be implemented through a combination of technologies tailored to the multi-disciplinary nature of the Arctic data. One of these technologies is The Brokering approach or “Framework”. The Brokering approach provides a series of services such as discovery, access, transformation and semantics support to enable translation from one discipline/culture to another. This is exactly the challenges the SDMS will have to handle and thus the Brokering approach is integrated in the design of the system. A description of the design strategy for the SDMS that includes The Brokering approach will be presented. The design and implementation plans for the SDMS are based on research done in the EU funded ESFRI project SIOS and examples of solutions for interoperable systems producing Arctic datasets and products coordinated through SIOS will be showcased. The reported experience from SIOS brokering approach will feed into the process of developing a sustainable brokering governance in the framework of Research Data Alliance. It will also support the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS). This is a contribution to increase our global capacity to create interoperable systems that provide multi-disciplinary dataset and products.