Elements: Software: The Integrated Geoscience Observatory (InGeO)

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This award will support the development of the Integrated Geoscience Observatory (InGeO). InGeO is an online platform that integrates data and associated software tools contributed by researchers into a unified toolset to enable studying the convergent, systems science. Complex processes in the Sun-Earth system affect the habitability of earth. As technological progress continues, our society also becomes increasingly vulnerable to the disruptions introduced by these complex processes. Study of the Sun-Earth system is traditionally broken-up into separate geoscience disciplines, typically focusing on a specific region of the system. However, often the interaction between several regions end up significantly affecting terrestrial systems. For example, a chain of processes occurring between the Sun, magnetosphere, and ionosphere often result in loss of GPS signal that severely affects all the communication/navigation and infrastructure that depends on this technology. To broach the larger question of the interaction of the subsystems studied by the separate communities, it is necessary to overcome the barriers of communication posed by different observational instruments, software tools for interpreting data, and modeling methods.To promote systems science, InGeO creates an integrated package of software tools specifically designed to help researchers find and integrate diverse observational data and distributes this toolkit to the community in the most flexible way possible. Building on the pilot project supported by the NSF EarthCube program, the specific features of the toolkit include: (a) linking diverse data sets from multiple observational data repositories; (b) using these data within a shareable computing environment, complete with a full selection of standard numerical and data-processing tools; and (c) enabling an ever growing assortment of targeted, user-contributed tools, such as assimilative models or interpolation methods. The toolkit can be accessed and used either through a web-based computing environment or by downloading Docker containers for local installation, with a nearly seamless transition between the two. The toolkit is open-source and ensures credit attribution to data and software contributors, and the InGeO team works with members of scientific community (especially students and early career researchers) to improve the toolkit and build a sustainable, more connected user-base.This award by the NSF Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure is jointly supported by the Cross-Cutting Activities Program within the NSF Directorate for Geosciences.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.