EarthCube IA: Collaborative Proposal: Integrated GeoScience Observatory

地球的宜居性取决于内部区域、固体表面、海洋、大气、近地空间环境和太阳之间复杂的相互作用。然而，对太阳-地球系统的研究传统上被分成不同的地球科学学科，因此，科学家们可以在拥有共同语言和知识基础的合理规模的团体中工作，从而取得进展。为了解决由不同群体研究的子系统之间的相互作用这一更大的问题，有必要克服由不同观测仪器、解释数据的软件工具和建模方法造成的交流障碍。为了应对这一挑战，综合地球科学观测站是一个试点项目，它创建了一个在线平台，将不同地球科学研究团体提供的数据和相关软件工具整合到一个统一的工具集中。其愿景是将地球科学研究的单个领域扩展到整个太阳-地球系统的研究，从而揭示对地球宜居性至关重要的系统级效应。EarthCube旨在开发一个框架，帮助研究人员了解地球系统。这一系统科学挑战在《太阳和空间物理年代际调查》[2012]中得到了认可，结论是“来自不同空间和地面仪器的数据需要常规地结合起来，以最大限度地发挥其多尺度潜力。”综合地球科学观测站是一个试点项目，通过关注地球空间研究的有限背景，探索实现这一愿景。天文台创建了一个由具有特定能力的研究人员提供的集成软件工具包，旨在实现不同观测数据的集成。该工具包的功能包括：(A)链接来自多个数据存储库的不同数据集，并自动将它们映射到用户指定的公共坐标网格；(B)实施著名的电离层电动力学同化制图（AMIE）程序，对这些数据进行同化，以获得全球图景；(C)利用EarthCube构建块GeoSoft（用于本体通信）和GeoDataspace（用于通过发布处理过的数据将功劳归于贡献者）。工具集既可以通过基于web的计算环境访问和使用，也可以通过下载包进行本地安装，两者之间几乎可以无缝转换。

The habitability of planet Earth depends on a complex interaction between interior regions, solid surface, oceans, atmosphere, near-earth space environment, and Sun. Yet, study of this Sun-Earth system is traditionally broken up into separate geoscience disciplines, so that progress can be made by scientists working in reasonably-sized communities that share a common language and base of knowledge. To broach the bigger 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. In answer to this challenge, the Integrated Geoscience Observatory is a pilot project that creates an online platform for integrating data and associated software tools contributed by separate geoscience research communities, into a unified toolset that brings them together. The vision is to expand the individual domains of geoscience research toward study of the whole Sun-Earth system, and in so doing to uncover the system level effects critical to the habitability of planet Earth.EarthCube aims to develop a framework for assisting researchers in understanding the Earth system. This systems science challenge is recognized in the Decadal Survey in Solar and Space Physics [2012], with the conclusion "Data from diverse space- and ground-based instruments need to be routinely combined in order to maximize their multi-scale potential." The Integrated Geoscience Observatory is a pilot project that explores realization of this vision by focusing on the limited context of geospace research. The observatory creates an integrated package of software tools contributed by researchers with specific capabilities, and designed to enable integration of diverse observational data. Features of the toolkit include: (A) linking diverse data sets from multiple data repositories and automatically mapping them to a common user-specified coordinate grid; (B) implementing the well-known Assimilative Mapping of Ionospheric Electrodynamics (AMIE) procedure for assimilation of this data to yield a global picture; and (C) utilization of the EarthCube building blocks GeoSoft, for communicating ontology, and GeoDataspace, for attributing credit to contributors through publication of processed data. The toolset can be accessed and used either through a web-based computing environment, or through download packages for local installation, with a nearly seamless transition between the two.