Sharing Earth Science Information to Support the Global Earth Observing System of Systems (GEOSS)

Earth science information has been generated and collected through a wide variety of mechanisms ranging from earth observation to model simulations, and large volume of datasets are archived and built with services to be accessed by end users in different fashions. It is a challenge to utilize the available information and services for supporting applications at a global level, which is referred to as the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS). This paper presents our research and development on utilizing interoperability to share earth science information to support the GEOSS. The efforts are described in four aspects: (1) the societal benefit areas identified by the Group on Earth Observation (GEO) in its 10-year implementation plan, (2) available earth science information resources, (3) an architecture leveraging interoperable services for sharing the resources to support the GEOSS, and (4) a prototype implementation of the architecture illustrates practical challenges and tradeoffs of our approach.