Rutgers Coastal Ocean Observation Lab - Projects: Building the Future Ocean Cyberinfrastruture

Projects: Building the Future Ocean Cyberinfrastruture

Network for Ocean Research, Interaction and Application - NORIA

Funding Agency: Ocean Leadership & National Science Foundation
Project Dates: May 1, 2007 to April 30, 2013

Project Description

COOL Examples

Oceanography is augmenting the ship-based expeditionary science of the last two centuries with a distributed, observatory-based approach in which scientists continuously interact with instruments, facilities, and other scientists to explore the earth-ocean-atmosphere system remotely. In order to provide the U.S. ocean sciences research community with access to the basic infrastructure required to make sustained, long-term and adaptive measurements in the oceans, the National Science Foundation (NSF) Ocean Sciences Division has initiated the Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI).
Routine, long-term measurement of episodic oceanic processes on a wide range of spatial and temporal scales is crucial to resolving scientific questions related to Earth’s climate, geodynamics, and marine ecosystems. Innovative ocean observatories providing unprecedented levels of power and communication and access to real-time sensor networks will drive scientific innovation and provide education and outreach capabilities that will dramatically impact the general understanding of, and public attitude toward, the ocean sciences.
The OOI comprises three distributed yet interconnected observatories spanning global, regional and coastal scales that when the data is combined will provide will allow scientists study a range of high priority processes highlighted by the community. The OOI CyberInfrastructure (CI) constitutes the integrating element that links and binds the three types of marine observatories and associated sensors into a coherent system-of-systems.
The objective of the OOI CI is to provide a comprehensive federated system of observatories, laboratories, classrooms, and facilities that realizes the OOI mission. The infrastructure provided to research scientists through the OOI will include the sea floor cables combined with water column fixed and mobile systems. The CI initiative also includes components such as unified project management, data dissemination and archiving, and education and outreach activities essential to the long-term success of ocean observatory science. The vision of the OOI CI is to provide the OOI user, beginning at the science community, with a system that enables simple and direct use of OOI resources to accomplish their scientific objectives. This vision includes direct access to instrument data, control, and operational activities described above, and the opportunity to seamlessly collaborate with other scientists, institutions, projects, and disciplines.