A Scalable Planetary Science Information Architecture for Big Science Data

Research has shown that the amount of data now available often overwhelms key functions of an information system. This situation necessitates the design of information architectures that scale to meet the challenges. The Planetary Data System, a NASA funded project, has developed an information architecture for the planetary science community that addresses this and other big science data issues noted in a National Research Council report regarding architectures for big data management and analysis and end-to-end data lifecycle management across diverse disciplines. The report identified enabling technology trends including distributed systems, service-oriented architectures, ontologies, models and information representation, scalable database systems, federated data security mechanisms, and technologies for moving big data. This paper will present the PDS4 information architecture, its successful implementation in a multi-discipline big-data environment.