Ocean Observatories Cyberinfrastructure

In May 2007, the University of California, San Diego, was awarded the contract for the OOI cyberinfrastructure, or computer architecture, effort. Scripps Institution of Oceanography will lead the project while the UCSD division of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2) will manage it and, together with Scripps and the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC), will build much of the cyberinfrastructure.

The kind of routine, long-term measurement of ocean processes that will be enabled by the OOI network is crucial to continued growth in understanding and in predictive modeling of complex natural phenomena that are highly variable and span enormous scales in space and time.

The LOOKING Program

The Laboratory for the Ocean Observatory Knowledge INtegration Grid (LOOKING)is a cyberinfrastructure research project within the National Science Foundation’s Information Technology Research Program. LOOKING is primarily a research effort into the identification, synthesis, and assemblage of existing and emerging concepts and technologies into a coherent viable cyberinfrastructure design.

The primary goal of LOOKING is to federate ocean observatories into an integrated knowledge grid.

LOOKING Goals

To research the cyberinfrastructure needed to address following scientific objectives:

1. Fully and quantitatively characterize selected volumes of the atmosphere, water column, and solid Earth including physical properties, dynamics, and life.

2. Receive information about interrelated system elements in real-time

3. Recognize departures from the norm and observe emergent phenomena

4. Conduct interactive experiments within the environment

5. Reconfigure our observational-sampling systems in response to events

6. Assimilate in situ data into models as feedback to measurement protocols

7. Continue/expand this real-time interaction within our oceans for decades.

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