[ESP] GO-ESSP Draft Mission Statement.

[Chris Kerr]

Gossip members:

Here is an initial draft of the GO-ESSP mission statement. Please send me
your comments/suggestions in the next couple of days.

Thanks

Chris


MISSION STATEMENT FOR THE GLOBAL ORGANIZATION FOR EARTH SYSTEM
SCIENCE PORTALS

Earth System Science Portals (GO-ESSP) is a collaboration designed to build
the next generation scalable software infrastructure needed to provide
internet access to observed and simulated data from the climate and weather
communities. GO-ESSP has been created to meet the challenge of developing the
individual software components and a federation of frameworks that can work
together using agreed-upon standards.

Previous generations of software have consisted of independent systems that
have been developed by individual institutions. The enormous demands for
climate and weather data have highlighted the need to create a software
infrastructure that can make this data more easily accessible to their
customers. The resource and technology demands necessary to create such an
infrastructure require that institutions work closely together to create such
an environment. The GO-ESSP has been created by software developers to meet
this demand.

GO-ESSP collaborations are intended to increase the availability of climate
and weather data to a range of communities. The traditional consumers of
climate and weather data have previously come from within the scientific
community. However, increasingly this information is being requested by
other communities including impacts researchers and policy and decision
makers. The challenge for GO-ESSP is to provide both access to and provide
mechanisms for data discovery to these diverse communities that is both
uniform and efficient.

The GO-ESSP collaborators realized early from the inception of the
organization that the distributed nature of the data served to the
communities would require that development must cross both agency and
international boundaries. GO-ESSP has evolved into a collaboration that
involves software developers from both Europe and the United States from
multiple agencies. The agencies supporting the GO-ESSP include NOAA, NASA,
DOE, NSF/UCAR, British Atmospheric Data Centre/NERC (UK), and the Central
Laboratory of the Research Councils (UK).

The goals of GO-ESSP are:

  Provide uniform access to earth systems data worldwide.

  Ensure earth systems data is made available to the widest possible range
  of users.

  Provide a forum that encourages discussion between earth systems data
  providers and its wide-range of users.

  Support better informed use of earth systems data.

  Improve data discovery, access, and analysis of earth system data.

  Provide a forum for international centers that distribute earth systems
  data.

  Provide an international forum for technical discussions of earth
  system science portal development.

  Develop standards for interfaces, protocols, schema, formats, and tools
  within the earth system science portal development community.

  Promote the use of and develop standards for the earth system science
  portal community.

  Provide a repository for "best" methodologies for development of earth
  system science portals.

  Strive toward open software development for earth system science portal
  development.

The multi-level architecture needed to be developed to meet the demands of
these communities requires advances in several key technologies. These
technologies fall into the following groups:

  Catalogs and Catalogs Services
  Distributed Search Capabilities
  Data Portal Design
  Security
  Services
  Vocabulary

Active collaborations occur within each of these groups, and yearly meetings
are used to update other GO-ESSP members on the advances that have
occurred since the last meeting.

More information about the Global Organization for Earth System Science
Portals and how to become actively involved in the organization can be
obtained from:

http://go-essp.gfdl.noaa.gov

-------------------------------------------------------

-- 
Dr. Christopher L. Kerr
Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory
Forrestal Campus
Princeton University                             
Princeton, New Jersey  08542
Telephone: (609) 452-6573
Fax:       (609) 987-5063
Email:     chris.kerr at noaa.gov