1. www.esa-thevoice.org THE VOICE study is run by an international consortium of industries led by DATAMAT S.p.A. (Italy). Other members include Dutch Space (The Netherlands), SciSys Ltd (UK) and S.E.S.A. S.p.A. (Italy), supported by VEGA Technologies SAS (France) and Lesprojekt sluzby Ltd. (CZ). THEVOI CE THEmatic Vertical Organisations and Implementation of Collaborative Environments Architecture for a Collaborative Environment infrastructure in Earth Science Following the output of an Earth Science requirements analysis phase carried out at the beginning of the project, which produced a set of service requirements for an Earth Science-related Collaboration Environment, it has been possible to divide service requirements into three main areas: Basic, Advanced, Specific This division derives from the analysis of such requirements. Some of them are fundamental and common to all use cases taken into account. Some others are common to all use cases but they are not perceived as basilar. For sure they can ease the communication and information sharing. Some other requirements are peculiar to a certain group of users and bound with the scientific community. As a result of this division among the requirements, two different service layers have been introduced. A first layer comprises all the services that we consider essential (Essential Layer). The other layer comprises all the services that are not essential in first instance, but could become essential depending on the type of collaboration needed in different scenarios (Additional Layer). Next figure presents the two layers as concentric circles. The arrows between inner and outer circles mean that the two layers can communicate. The THE VOICE architecture is based on these layers of services. THE VOICE study is funded by the European Space Agency’s General Study Programme © THE VOICE Consortium and ESA

2. www.esa-thevoice.org © THE VOICE Consortium and ESA THE VOICE study is funded by the European Space Agency’s General Study Programme THE VOICE is member of Moving from the services layers towards the architecture, next figure shows a logical view of the Collaborative Environment sketched as a collection of services and actors involved. It gives a view of all the services building the THE VOICE architecture and shows how those services relate to actors, seen as service requestors and service owners. Many different eCollaboration technologies can be used to improve collaboration in the Earth Science Domain of which Web Services as well as Internet can be considered as the backbone: any possible implementation of the proposed THE VOICE SOA- based architecture has to be based on them. Moreover, as of today, Web/Grid Services technology is one of the best candidates for a computer-to-computer collaboration on a large scale distributed infrastructure and for supporting human-to-human collaboration as well, using P2P also for some specific services where such technology is well advanced and security issues are not of an utmost importance. This picture highlights, for each service, any consumer that can invoke the service: services that can be used by other services are circled in blue; services that can be used by a user are circled in red; services that can be used by an operator are circled in yellow. It is important to underline that “user” indicates here any possible actor of an Earth Science Vertical Organisation. This provides good chances that future exploitation of the THE VOICE architecture towards an implementation of a Collaborative Environment infrastructure will be successful and will enhance productivity in Earth Science domains. For more information please contact: Luigi Fusco (luigi.fusco@esa.int), Stefano Beco (stefano.beco@datamat.it), Annalisa Terracina (annalisa.terracina@datamat.it)