Internet-based Collaboratories for the Geo-Sciences

Research in the geosciences is becoming more inter-disciplinary, collaboration among geographically distributed colleagues more prevalent, and the quantity of distributed, heterogeneous data holdings of interest to the community is greatly expanding; hence, the need arises for better interaction and integration than is currently supported by simple technologies, such as email, ftp, and static HTML. We describe how Internet-based Collaboratories can address these issues using the highly successful Space Physics and Aeronomy Research Collaboratory (SPARC) as an example. (A collaboratory is a, "center without walls, in which researchers can work without regard to geographical location, interacting with colleagues, accessing instrumentation, sharing data and computational resources, and accessing digital libraries" [National collaboratories: Applying information technology for scientific research, National Research Council, 1993]). We plan to intiate a pilot Ocean Drilling Program (ODP) Collaboratory as a step towards a broader, community effort in ocean sciences and the geosciences. We will build upon the experience and techonolgy developed in SPARC, and leverage and inform the efforts of the Science of Collaboratories project (http://www.scienceofcollaboratories.org), an extensive analysis of the technologies, principals, and heuristics that lead to successful, technologically-mediated collaboration. SPARC (http://www.si.umich.edu/SPARC) was initially funded by NSF in 1991 as an effort to provide remote, real-time, collaborative data access and instrument control to a suite of instruments located in Sondrestrom, Greenland. Over the years the project has grown to include more than 800 real-time and archival data sources, including space-based and ground-based instruments, computer models, and community databases. SPARC currently boasts more than 300 registered users. The capabilities and focus of the system have also increased significantly, from providing real-time data access and instrument control, to supporting a complete web-based environment for scientific collaboration, from research planning, to proposal prepartion, through data collection, to presentation of results. The advantages of this environment are further demonstrated through its successful adoption by research teams working in a variety of different disciplines, including civil engineering, public policy, computer science, distance education, etc., to name but a few.