Designing the Data and Communications Infrastructure for the U.S. Integrated Ocean Observing System

Abstract

Central to the vision of the U.S. Integrated Ocean Observing System (IOOS) is a data management infrastructure that joins Federal, regional, state, municipal, academic, and commercial partners in a seamless data-sharing framework. The Data Management and Communications (DMAC) Subsystem of IOOS must be capable of integrating the full spectrum of marine data types and products. The design of the DMAC Subsystem is made particularly challenging by three competing factors: 1) The data types to be integrated are heterogeneous and have complex structure; 2) The holdings are physically distributed, with some individual partners contributing petabytes; and 3) IOOS is a loose federation of many organizations, large and small, without a corporate management hierarchy. Designing the DMAC Subsystem goes beyond solving problems of software engineering; the most demanding aspects of the solution lie in community behavior. A plan for the subsystem is described.