Advanced End-to-End Cyberinfrastructure Installation, Validation, and Optimization for the Barrow Global Climate Change Research Facility

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Given the need to understand global climate change and its likely effects upon daily life in the Arctic and the need for more and better data for global models, Congress has funded construction of a Barrow Global Climate Change Research Facility (BGCCRF) to replace the aging Naval Arctic Research Laboratory (NARL). NSF, acknowledging the key role of information technology (IT) in Earth System Science, is supporting this proposal by the BGCCRF operator, the Barrow Arctic Science Consortium (BASC), to design and install the facility's information architecture. This project delivers modern IT infrastructure and an approach to instrumentation that is based around the new BGCCRF with a wireless radius of about 10 miles around the BGCCRF. This wireless radius focuses on supporting work in the Barrow Environmental Observatory (BEO), on coastal sea-ice, and research vessels offshore. BASC is drawing on faculty at the University of Cincinnati (UC) and IT professionals at the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) to meet these needs. The IT effort here will support the approximately 30-40 active NSF research projects as well as other agency projects in the Barrow area. The proposal includes UC and UAF working jointly on the infrastructure and instrumentation plan, with UC focusing on developing a wireless radius of about 10 miles around the BGCCRF. This proposal covers the wireless radius and the solid cyberinfrastructure of the new science support facility. To develop the plan implemented here, BASC convened three national science community meetings on IT planning. Two focused on user needs assessment. The 1st, in Williamsburg in 2003, identified funding agencies' (NOAA, NSF, NASA, DOE, etc.) scientists' needs. Convened by UC faculty, two dozen network engineers, federal agency representatives and academic IT experts attended, targeting federal agency bandwidth, acceptable use policy and IT security requirements. The 2nd meeting (Boulder 2004) assessed end-user (scientist) needs. Several dozen current and potential Barrow researchers attended. A straw person information architecture was developed from these meetings, then reviewed, refined and vetted at a 3rd meeting held in Barrow in January 2006, that took into account more recent and definite construction and budget constraints. This project slightly modifies those recommendations to keep the overall project costs reasonable while meeting the essential needs of the research community in the Barrow area. The improved IT capability in the Barrow area will better enable wireless connectivity to instrumentation and data flow back to researchers' home institutions as well as improve local network stability and connectivity to the internet.