CHORDS: Building the Internet of Things for the Geosciences (IoT-G)

Cloud-Hosted Real-time Data Services for the Geosciences (CHORDS, see chordsrt.com) addresses the ever-increasing importance of real-time scientific data, particularly in mission critical scenarios where informed decisions must be made rapidly. Many geoscience phenomenon, ranging from hurricanes and severe weather, to earthquakes, volcanoes and floods, can benefit from simple, efficient and timely management and distribution of real-time data. The National Science Foundation supports many small university research teams whose measurements could ultimately improve forecasts and predictions, but it is very difficult for them to deliver the observations in real-time. The IT expense, expertise, staff time and common bureaucracy are often insurmountable barriers for broad dissemination of this valuable real-time data. These teams would benefit from an easy to use, inexpensive and scalable, cloud-based solution which brings their observations to the Internet.

As part of NSF's broader EarthCube initiative, the CHORDS system leverages the role of real-time data in the geosciences. Timely and standards-based access to observations facilitates measurement reliability, advanced algorithm and workflow development and connection to models and archives. Through modern concepts of linked-data, controlled vocabularies and dispersed data services, CHORDS can make a diverse suite of real-time data available to the broader geosciences community, fostering innovative new science in these areas through a simple cloud-based application. Sensors currently attached to CHORDS include those from hydrology, atmosphere and solid earth science domains. Broad use of this framework will expand the role of real-time data within the geosciences, and enhance the potential of streaming data sources to enable adaptive experimentation and real-time hypothesis testing.