ITR: Collaborative Research: Looking Ahead: Designing the Next Generation Cyber-infrastructure to Operate Interactive Ocean Observatories

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This project involves research and experimentation with cyberinfrastructure components in order to develop and prototype new approaches to information technology for ocean observing systems. The goal is to develop and test ways of managing data from ocean observatories as well as mechanisms for facilitating the operation of ocean observatories. A centerpiece of the work is the initiation of a prototype ocean observatory grid that links submarine facilities off the Pacific coasts of Mexico, the U.S. and Canada, the "Laboratory for an Ocean Observatory Knowledge INtegration Grid (LOOKING)," using experimental wireless networks, optical networks, and Grid technology. The LOOKING framework provides middleware to facilitate and enable instrument and infrastructure control, data generation and distributed storage, data assimilation through comparison with ocean simulations, integrative data fusion and analysis, visualization, and spontaneous user collaboration. The effort needed to develop this involves three parts: a physical layer based primarily on network connectivity provided by the OptIPuter and ROADNet projects; research on shore-side software technology based on web-service based implementations of a variety of tools including ocean ontology-based semantic search tools, event-detection in real-time data streams, the integration of OPeNDAP and SRB, and data visualization; and ocean-side research focused on instrument monitoring and control, as well as data-flow management. As part of the proposed work a converged data grid model for the MARS and ROADNet data systems will be developed, data from CODAR sites, ships, cabled observatories and surface buoys will be integrated into the system, and a variety of user services will be implemented. The expectation is that lessons learned from this activity will inform the design of cyberinfrastructure systems for future ocean observatories such as those envisaged within the ORION project. If successful, this project could have a significant impact on the success of the planned ORION ocean observatory project by developing data management and observatory control approaches that can be implemented in ORION and by developing effective user interfaces to a collection of ocean observing systems. Research challenges include developing a software infrastructure suitable for heterogeneous real-time data streams, monitoring and control in non-robust networks, and real-time event detection and characterization. This project involves numerous institutions and combines the efforts of computer science researchers and oceanographers. It leverages, or links to, a number of existing or funded pilot observatory, networking and data system projects including: SCCOOS, MARS, NEPTUNE-Canada, ROADNet, and OptIPuter. New approaches to ocean observing systems involve large arrays of sensors and many mobile, robotic platforms for research and educational activities throughout the ocean basins. Innovative full-ocean-depth observatories in coastal, regional, and global settings can vastly expand human tele-presence within, and the basic understanding of, interlinked processes that modulate climate, create energy and mineral deposits, influence the carbon cycle, drive major hazards, such as earthquakes, tsunami's and violent storms, and support the recently discovered volcanically hosted microbial biosphere-a potential analog for life on other planets.