The Earth System CoG Collaboration Environment: Connecting Resources in the Earth Sciences

The Earth System CoG collaboration environment supports Earth science research and product development in virtual organizations comprised of multiple projects and communities. It provides data, metadata, and visualization services along with tools for collaboration, and can be used to host individual projects or to profile projects hosted elsewhere. All projects on CoG are described using a project ontology - an organized common vocabulary - that exposes information needed for collaboration and decision-making. Projects can be linked into a network, and the underlying ontology enables views of this information across the network. This access to information, and the community-driven evolution of a project ontology that includes a description of management and governance roles, bodies, and processes, promote the creation of active and knowledgeable project governance, at both individual and aggregate project levels. A description of the environment along with results of recent use by an model intercomparison project (MIP) and international software project will be presented.