1. Cyberinfrastructure for the 21st Century (CIF21): Data MRI and STCI
EarthCube
CASC
Sept 9, 2011
Rob Pennington
Office of Cyberinfrastructure (OCI)
National Science Foundation 1

2. Framing the Challenge: Science and Society Transformed by Data
Modern science
Data- and compute-intensive
Integrative, multiscale
Multi-disciplinary Collaborations for Complexity
Individuals, groups, teams, communities
Sea of Data
Age of Observation
Distributed, central repositories, sensor- driven, diverse, etc

3. Advisory Committee for Cyberinfrastructure Task Force Reports
More than 25 workshops and Birds of a Feather sessions and more than 1300 people involved
Final recommendations presented to the NSF Advisory Committee on Cyberinfrastructure (ACCI) Dec 2010
Final reports on-line at:
Campus
Bridging
Data and Viz
HPC
HIGH P ERFORMANCE COMPUTING
Grand
Challenges
Cyberlearning
Software

4. Data Task Force Recommendations
Infrastructure:
Recognize data infrastructure and services (including visualization) as essential long term research assets fundamental to today’s science
Economic sustainability:
Develop realistic cost models to underpin institutional/national business plans for research repositories/data services
Culture Change:
Emphasize expectations for data sharing; support the establishment of new citation models in which data and software tool providers and developers are recognized and credited with their contributions
Data Management Guidelines:
Identify and share best-practices for the critical areas of data management
Ethics and IP:
Train researchers in privacy-preserving data access

5. Evolution of Cyberinfrastructure for the 21st Century (CIF21) and Data
National Science Board (NSB)
On-going input
Science &
Engineering
Research +
Cyberinfrastructure
ACCI
Data Task
Force
NSF
CIF21
Data
Programs
DataNet
Program
Community
Input

6. Cyberinfrastructure Ecosystem (CIF21)
Organizations
Universities, schools
Government labs, agencies
Research and Medical Centers
Libraries, Museums
Virtual Organizations
Communities
Expertise
Research and Scholarship
Education
Learning and Workforce Development
Interoperability and operations
Cyberscience
Scientific Instruments
Large Facilities, MREFCs,,telescopes
Colliders, shake Tables
Sensor Arrays
- Ocean, environment, weather,
buildings, climate. etc
Discovery
Collaboration
Education
Data
Databases, Data repositories
Collections and Libraries
Data Access; storage, navigation
management, mining tools,
curation, privacy
Computational Resources
Supercomputers
Clouds, Grids, Clusters
Visualization
Compute services
Data Centers
Networking
Campus, national, international networks
Research and experimental networks
End-to-end throughput
Cybersecurity
Software
Applications, middleware
Software development and support
Cybersecurity: access,
authorization, authentication
Maintainability, sustainability, and extensibility

7. CIF21: Four Major Thrust Areas
Organizations
Universities, schools
Government labs, agencies
Research and Medical Centers
Libraries, Museums
Virtual Organizations
Communities
Community
Research
Networks
Expertise
Research and Scholarship
Education
Learning and Workforce Development
Interoperability and operations
Cyberscience
Scientific Instruments
Large Facilities, MREFCs,,telescopes
Colliders, shake Tables
Sensor Arrays
- Ocean, environment, weather,
buildings, climate. etc
Data-Enabled Science
Discovery
Collaboration
Education
Education: integral and embedded
Data
Databases, Data repositories
Collections and Libraries
Data Access; storage, navigation
management, mining tools,
curation, privacy
Computational Resources
Supercomputers
Clouds, Grids, Clusters
Visualization
Compute services
Data Centers
New Computational
Resources
Access and
Connections to
CI Resources
Networking
Campus, national, international networks
Research and experimental networks
End-to-end throughput
Cybersecurity
Software
Applications, middleware
Software development and support
Cybersecurity: access,
authorization, authentication

8. Scientific Data Challenges
Square
Kilometer
Array
Climate,
Environment
Exa
Bytes
Peta
Tera
Giga
Volume
Genomics
Bytes per day
Useful Lifetime
Climate,
Environment
TeraGrid, Blue
Waters
LHC
LHC
LSST
DataNet
Distribution
Genomics
Many smaller datasets…
Data Access

9. CIF21 Data Goals Support data intensive and multi-disciplinary science
Provide reliable digital access, integration, management and preservation capabilities for science and engineering data over a decades-long timeline
Develop innovative data analysis and mining tools to support data manipulation, modeling, and discovery
Engage at the frontiers of technological innovation and transformative science to drive the leading edge forward

10. DataNet Role in CIF21
DataNet is a strategic part of Foundation-wide investments in data in CIF21
Focus on center–scale awards
DataNet efforts effectively balance:
Production infrastructure to provide operational services
Research to create next generation infrastructure
DataNet awards are partnerships
Responsive to user communities to define their meaningful and useful scope
Form a coordinated network to provide national, interdisciplinary data models and infrastructure

11. DataNet: A Multi-tiered and Multi-Disciplinary Landscape
Modeling and Simulation Communities
Population, Climate,
Environment Communities
Data-enabled Science
Genomics
Communities
Data Curation
Data Storage
DataNet supported

12. Data Storage National storage infrastructure for scientific data
Accommodate scale and heterogeneity of scientific data through robust, open, and broadly accepted standards
Sustainable cost model that can be implemented with governmental, academic, non profit, and commercial stakeholders such that it is sustainable.
Make strategic investments that:
Leverage existing resources in TeraGrid, commercial clouds, federal data centers
Meet growing capacity needs at optimum cost
Provide coordinating and integrative functions for integrity, access control, availability, persistence
Catalyze a national data infrastructure in a similar role that NSFNet played in Internet

13. Data Curation
Sustainable, community-based networks for management of critical scientific data resources in a life-cycle context.
Overcome challenges of culture change, policy development and implementation, sustainable operations, quality and usability control.
Strategic awards that address heterogeneity in formats, complexity, semantics of data collections that are valued by science communities of significant breadth.
Operate as a network of data services that promote interoperability, multidisciplinarity, and scalability.

14. Data Enabled Science
Provide critical tools and services for data mining, integration, analysis, modeling and visualization.
Overcome barriers to scaling, synthesis, and interoperability to promote effective use of large scale, shared data resources.
Strategic investments that concentrate tools, resources and expertise in support of compelling grand challenge science questions.

15. Cross Cutting Challenges
Balancing research into next generations of infrastructure with operation & maintenance of current capacity.
Stimulate innovation and manage transitions
Sustainable, long term programs
Technical design, development of business models, and integration with the research cycle.
Integration
Vertical – Linking low-level bit storage infrastructure to data collections, and finally to applications
Horizontal– Achieving connectivity and interoperability between activities that vary in scale, disciplinarity, and funding source.

16. DataNet Program Management
Life cycle perspective covering the use of the data
Research, development, implementation, operations, sustainability, close-out
Apply project management methods
WBS, risk management, change control, schedule, milestones, deliverables
Standardized process:
Evaluate science merit, conceptual design
Develop draft PEP, design and reporting metrics.
Critical review – prototype, finalize baseline (approval/mid-course correction/off-ramp)
Implementation & operations – subject to change control, oversight based on milestones & metrics
Final operational review – informs decision for renewal, termination.

17. DataNet Federation Consortium Data Driven Science
Implement national data grid
Federate existing discipline-specific data management systems to enable national research collaborations
Enable collaborative research on shared data collections
Manage collection life cycle as the user community broadens
Integrate “live” research data into education initiatives
Enable student research participation through control policies
Project
Shared Collection
Processing Pipeline
Digital Library
Reference Collection
Federation
Collection Life Cycle
Science and Engineering Initiatives:
Ocean Observatories Initiative
the iPlant Collaborative
CUAHSI
CIBER-U
Odum Social Science Institute
Temporal Dynamics of Learning Center
Cyber-infrastructure Partners:
Univ. of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Univ. of California, San Diego
Arizona State University
Drexel University
Duke University
University of Arizona
University of South Carolina
Policy-based
data management
National Science Foundation Cooperative Agreement: OCI

18. MRI 2011
CUNY SI: Instrumentation for Enabling Data Analysis, Sharing, Storage, and Preservation
UC Boulder: Acquisition of a Scalable Petascale Storage Infrastructure for Data-Collections and Data-Intensive Discovery
RPI: Acquisition of a Balanced Environment for Simulation
NCA&T: Acquisition of a Complete High-Performance Modeling and Visualization System for Research in Mathematical Biology and Mathematical Geosciences
OSU: Acquisition of a High Performance Compute Cluster for Multidisciplinary Research

19. What is EarthCube?

20. A Call to Action
Over the next decade, the geosciences community commits to developing a framework to understand and predict responses of the Earth as a system—from the space-atmosphere boundary to the Earth’s core, including the influences of humans and ecosystems
Transitions and Tipping Points in Complex Environmental Systems, NSF AC for Environmental Research and Education, 2009
Earth Science and Applications from Space: National Imperatives for the Next Decade and Beyond, 2007
High-Performance Computing Requirements for the Computational Solid Earth Sciences, 2005

21. Goal of EarthCube
To transform the conduct of research in geosciences by supporting community-based cyberinfrastructure to integrate data and information for knowledge management across the Geosciences.

22. What Needs To Be Done?
Integrate data, tools and communities through cyberinfrastructure
Establish a governance mechanism that is inclusive and adopted by the community
Utilize current and emerging technologies to create transparent infrastructure for the geosciences community

23. Convergence to a Unifying Architecture
Modes of Support
Well-Connected through
EarthCube
Loosely or Not Connected
This is an iterative process

24. EARTHCUBE ASSUMPTIONS
The geosciences community is ready to take on the EarthCube challenge
Community will start self-organizing prior to EarthCube activities, like the Nov 1-4 Charrette
Current and emerging technology will help achieve the convergence envisioned for EarthCube
A broad range of expertise and resources must be engaged to shape EarthCube

25. Developed through EAGERs
Proposed
Framework
Approaches
Developed through EAGERs
DCL
Released
Two
WebEx
events
Sandpit/ IdeasLab
to determine
18 mo.
prototype
award(s)
Charrette
ROB
Jun 2011
Nov
May 2012
Jul-Sept 2011
Nov/11-Apr/12

26. EARTHCUBE TIMELINE Prototype Development: May to December 2013
On-line Community Information:
August to November, 2011
EarthCube Charrette:
Early November, 2011
EarthCube Ideas/Lab:
Tentatively Early May, 2012
Prototype Development:
May to December 2013
Fully integrated geosciences infrastructure:

27. Pre-Charrette Organization (August – September)
Second WebEx on Aug. 22
NSF seeks input from wide range of sources
Individuals, inst./org., representatives of scientific groups or communities
Facilities and managers of CI endeavors
Industry, Federal Labs., Federal Agencies, and International Partners
NSF will establish on-line resources and forums to
Gather community inputs/requirements
Facilitate partnerships and collaborations
Encourage submission of approaches to the EarthCube design

28. Charrette Process Stakeholders focus EarthCube Ideas and Activities
Plenary Sessions to
discuss user requirements
refine approaches and designs for EarthCube
develop partnerships and new collaborations
Remote participation and real-time comments system will be available
Summary Session
Comments from NSF, facilitators, and participants on process
NSF provides guidance on post-Charrette activities

29. Questions?