The environmental virtual observatory pilot (EVOp): a cloud solution demonstrating effective science for efficient decisions

Environmental managers and policy makers face a challenging future trying to accommodate growing expectations of environmental well-being, while subject to maturing regulation, constrained budgets and a public scrutiny that expects easier and more meaningful access to data and decision logic. To support such a challenge requires new tools and new approaches. The EVOp is an initiative from the UK Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) designed to deliver proof of concept for these new tools and approaches. A series of exemplar 'big catchment science questions' are posed and the prospects for their solution are assessed. These are then used to develop cloud solutions for serving data, models, visualisation and analysis tools to scientists, regulators, private companies and the public, all of whom have different expectations of what environmental information is important. Approaches are tested regularly with users using SCRUM. The VO vision encompasses seven key ambitions: i. being driven by the need to contribute to the solution of major environmental issues that impinge on, or link to, catchment science ii. having the flexibility and adaptability to address future problems not yet defined or fully clarified iii. being able to communicate issues and solutions to a range of audiences iv. supporting easy access by a variety of users v. drawing meaningful information from data and models and identifying the constraints on application in terms of errors, uncertainties, etc vi. adding value and cost effectiveness to current investigations by supporting transfer and scale adjustment thus limiting the repetition of expensive field monitoring addressing essentially the same issues in varying locations vii. promoting effective interfacing of robust science with a variety of end users by using terminology or measures familiar to the user (or required by regulation), including financial and carbon accounting, whole life or fixed period costing, risk as probability or as disability adjusted life years/ etc as appropriate Architectures pivotal to communicating these ambitions are presented. Cloud computing facilitates the required interoperability across data sets, models, visualisations etc. There are also additional legal, security, culrural and standards barriers that need to be solved before such a cloud becomes operational.