EarthCube Building Blocks: Software Stewardship for the Geosciences

地球科学和环境科学软件对于数据分析和产生关于地球的新知识和理解至关重要。由于使用该软件进行的操作，计算和预测的可重复性对于科学，商业和监管应用非常重要，因此重要的是，地球科学家及其同事生成的软件应被捕获，策划，管理并应要求提供给所有感兴趣的各方。该项目通过在计算机科学家，软件开发人员和所有地球科学领域的科学家之间建立伙伴关系来启动这一过程，目标是创建一个软件生态系统和软件管理文化，使地球科学家和其他人能够使他们的软件可访问并将其作为宝贵的科学资产进行管理。这项工作将研究创建有效的在线工具的可能性，这些工具将指导用户通过软件使用和开发的最佳实践，包括组件化代码，描述和记录他们的代码，许可他们的程序，并维护可重用的代码。它还将探索培训地球科学家的最佳和最有效的手段，并提供适当的教育/培训材料，以显着提高地球科学家的能力，更有效地开发和管理自己，学生和其他人生成的软件。这项工作的更广泛影响包括建立科学基础设施，吸引计算机和地球科学领域的早期职业专业人员，以及提高地球科学从业者的网络复杂性。该项目支持一个地理分布的核心团队（加州，宾夕法尼亚州和科罗拉多），并与致力于推进地球科学地理空间需求的全国学术组织联盟合作。

Geoscience and environmental science software is crucial for data analysis and generating new knowledge and understanding about the Earth. Because reproducibility of operations, calculations, and predictions done with this software is important for science, commercial, and regulatory applications, it is important that the software generated by geoscientists and their colleagues be captured, curated, managed, and made available to all interested parties upon request. This project initiates that process by building partnerships between computer scientist, software developers, and scientists across all geoscience domains with the goal or creating a software ecosystem and a culture of software stewardship that will empower geoscientists and others to make their software accessible and manage it as a valuable scientific asset. This work will examine the possibility of creating effective on-line tools that will guide users through best practices in software use and development, including componentizing codes, describing and documenting their codes, licensing their programs, and maintaining reusable code. It will also explore the best and most effective means for training geoscientists and providing appropriate educational/training materials to dramatically improve the ability of geoscientists to more effectively develop and curate software generated by themselves, their students, and others. Broader impacts of the work include building infrastructure for science, engagement of early career professionals in both computer and geoscience, and increasing cyber sophistication of geoscience practitioners. The project supports a core team that is geographically distributed (California, Pennsylvania, and Colorado) and partners with a nation-wide consortium of academic organizations dedicated to advancing geoscience geospatial needs.