Building transparent data access for ocean observatories: Coordination of U.S. IOOS DMAC with NSF’s OOI Cyberinfrastructure Matthew Arrott1, Charles Alexander2, John Graybeal1, Christopher Mueller3, Richard Signell4, Jeff de La Beaujardiere2, Arthur Taylor5, John Wilkin6, Brian Powell7, John Orcutt8 1Calit2, University of California at San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093 USA 2U.S. IOOS Program Office/NOAA, 1100 Wayne Ave. Suite 1225, Silver Spring, MD 20910 USA 3Applied Science Associates, Inc. 55 Village Square Drive, South Kingstown, RI 20879 USA 4USGS Woods Hole Coastal & Marine Science Center, 384 Woods Hole Road, Woods Hole, MA 02543-1598 USA 5NOAA National Weather Service, Meteorological Development Lab, 1325 East West Highway, Silver Spring, MD 20910 USA 6Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences, Rutgers University, 71 Dudley Road, New Brunswick, NJ 08901-8525 USA 7School of Oceanography and Earth Science and Technology, University of HI, 1680 East West Rd, Honolulu, HI 96822 USA 8Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UCSD, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla CA, 92093 USA Abstract—The NOAA-led U.S. Integrated Ocean Observing providing a new research and education infrastructure to System (IOOS) and the National Science Foundation’s Ocean accelerate understanding of the ocean and seafloor and their Observatories Initiative (OOI) have been collaborating since 2007 roles in the earth system. Two coastal arrays, four global on advanced tools and technologies that ensure open access to arrays in the deep ocean, a cabled observatory over the Juan de ocean observations and models. Initial collaboration focused on Fuca tectonic plate, and a sophisticated cyberinfrastructure serving ocean data via cloud computing – a key component of the OOI cyberinfrastructure (CI) architecture. As the OOI comprise the effort. transitioned from planning to execution in the Fall of 2009, an OOI/IOOS team developed a customer-based “use case” to align The OOI is in the second year of a planned five-year design more closely with the emerging objectives of OOI-CI team’s first and build process that will end in 2015 with the initial software release scheduled for Summer 2011 and provide a deployment of all elements and 25 years of operations will quantitative capacity for stress-testing these tools and protocols. follow. Innovative ocean observing technologies will be A requirements process was initiated with coastal modelers, deployed at key locations across the world’s oceans. A focusing on improved workflows to deliver ocean observation Regional Scale Nodes deployment will include a cabled data. Accomplishments to date include the documentation and seafloor and water column component on the Juan de Fuca assessment of scientific workflows for two “early adopter” modeling teams from IOOS Regional partners (Rutgers – the Plate off the northwest coast of the United States, providing State University of New Jersey and University of Hawaii’s School high power to seafloor and water column instrumentation and of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology) to enable full high bandwidth for all the associated data. A Coastal and understanding of data sources and needs; generation of all- Global Scale Nodes deployment will include two coastal inclusive lists of the data sets required and those obtainable arrays and four open ocean global arrays. The four global through IOOS; a more complete understanding of areas where arrays will be located in the Gulf of Alaska, the Irminger Sea IOOS can expand data access capabilities to better serve the off southern Chile and in the Argentine Basin. The two coastal needs of the modeling community; and development of "data set deployments will include the Endurance Array off the coast of agents" (software) to facilitate data acquisition from numerous Oregon and Washington of the United States and the Pioneer data providers and conversions of the data format to the OOI-CI canonical form. Array which will initially be deployed in the mid-Atlantic bight off the east coast of the United States but will be Keywords - data access; ocean observatories, U.S. IOOS, OOI; relocated approximately every five years as directed by the cyberinfrastructure; coastal modelers, DMAC ocean science community [1]. I. INTRODUCTION Each location will support a broad range of sensors to measure ocean and seafloor processes and properties. Data will be A. Ocean Observatory Initiative transported via an innovative and sophisticated The National Science Foundation’s Ocean Observatory cyberinfrastructure (CI) to provide two-way connectivity to Initiative (OOI) [1] is working to advance the ocean sciences the observatories and freely serve the data in near-real time. by developing the infrastructure for sustained ocean The OOI’s open data policy will enable access to data and observations at key coastal and open ocean locations by associated products to scientists, policy makers, educators and the general public. B. U.S. Integrated Ocean Observing System The United States Integrated Ocean Observinng System (U.S. IOOS) [2,3,4] represents a national consortium of governmental and nongovernmental stakeholders with specific interest in marine environmental phenomena occurring in the open ocean, U.S. coastal waters, and the Great Lakes. The core mission of U.S. IOOS is the systematic provision of ready access to this marine environmental data and both observed and model data products in an interoperable, reliable, timely, and user-specified manner to end users/customers in order to serve seven critical and expanding societal needs: ● Improve predictions of climate change and weather, Figure 1. Dinstinctions and synergies between OOI and IOOS. and their effects on coastal communities and the nation; Figure 1 shows, they are complementary efforts to enhance ● Improve the safety and efficiency of maritime our access to and understanding of the ocean and operations; oceanographic processes. U.S. IOOS will provide ● More effectively mitigate the effects of natural comprehensive, sustained and dependable observations in real hazards; time on a broad geographic basis, similar to the observations ● Improve national and homeland security; supporting the forecasts of the National Weather Service, to ● Reduce public health risks; support information needs and forecasts for resource ● More effectively protect and restore healthy coastal management, maritime transportation, and a host of other ecosystems; and ocean and coastal activities. OOI will provide infrastructure to ● Enable the sustained use of ocean and coastal enable hypothesis-driven basic oceanographic and geophysical resources. research by fostering specialized observations, instruments and activities for the purpose of answering basic research U.S. IOOS is implemented by a dynamic partnership of questions, with data available in as close to real-time as federal agencies, strategically located regionnal associations, practicable. and private sector partners working together to effectively deliver and use ocean data and models [5]. It consists of six Figure 2 explores these distinctions in more detail. Whereas subsystems: three functional (observing, data management and U.S. IOOS will depend on established technologies capable of communications, modeling and analysis) and three cross- long-term, untended deployments in specific locations, OOI cutting (governance and management, research and scientists will develop and use the latest technologies and development, training and education) [5]. sensors to push the envelope of knowledge and engineering into new oceanographic and computational realms. Just as In this paper we report findings on the current technical OOI researchers will benefit from the data and access to the collaboration between the OOI-CI and U.S. IOOS DMAC ocean that IOOS’ unprecedented spatial and temporal teams that are exploring common functionall requirements to coverage provides, so will IOOS benefit as the techniques, seamlessly enable access to and use of ocean observations data. Section II provides background on the programmatic IOOS OOI origins and intersections of the OOI and U.S. IOOS programs. Section III briefly provides a technical introduction to the Data Driven by societal goals and used to Governed by the needs of the research routinely and continuously deliver community, with experimental data OOI’s CI and IOOS DMAC and describes the initial data and data products of known delivery in near-real-time ultimately quality in real time to decision makers leading to improved predictability of collaboration. Section IV describes the status of the current ocean processes in areas of societal need collaboration with a detailed description of the features and Sensors Will depend on highly reliable Will provide the motivation and capabilities of work completed to date. Finally, Section V sensors and data telemetry to ensure capability to try out new, experimental presents the anticipated next steps. that critical data streams are not sensors and to develop new observing interrupted, as well as on operational strategies that may eventually be adopted models for making predictions with by the IOOS system once their reliability known levels of certainty for routine operation is established II. IOOS AND OOI: DISTINCT BUT SYNERGISTIC Design Primarily stationary operational Highly adaptive, allowing scientists to system, designed to provide reliable respond to ocean event and control and operational data streams adopt observatory assets and data Both the U.S. IOOS and OOI initiatives [6] arose from