EarthCube

This post was written by Carol Meyer, Executive Director of the Foundation for Earth Science

EarthCube. In the time I have been associated with the ESIP Federation, no new initiative has generated as much buzz across the community as NSF’s EarthCube initiative. EarthCube is an exciting concept that is contrary to the way NSF has ever done science before. The vision put forward by NSF for EarthCube aligns with the way ESIP members work through community-driven governance, distributed, service-oriented architecture and the balance between autonomous member organizations and collaboration.  But instead of feeling at peace with EarthCube ideas, it is my sense that the ESIP community is a little on edge.

Perhaps the unease comes from the name – EarthCube. A cube, with just three dimensions, doesn’t fully describe all of the dimensions present in the grand challenges that are posed by EarthCube. Data interoperability, systems integration, human and organizational interworkability – are not going to be solved by traditional three-dimensional solutions.

Or, is the community’s unease relateld to the fear that through the EarthCube process, NSF will create ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ and accomplishments that have taken years to build will be discarded? No doubt there have been prior attempts to bring the larger Earth science community together to facilitate integration across communities. While well intentioned, these efforts too often resulted in the creation of a monolithic system that only involves a few research centers and did not serve their communities well.

Instead, I understand that EarthCube seeks to leverage existing systems, technologies, organizations and people to enable integration, while allowing for new technologies that provide for interoperability and integration to be deployed as they become available. NSF’s shift toward a distributed, collaborative approach through EarthCube is the embodiment of a paradigm shift that ESIP members have understood for many years. EarthCube solutions necessarily will require innovations that transcend existing boundaries of institutions, systems, programs and funding streams. It will require solutions that rely heavily on many federal agencies, universities, standards organizations, professional associations and societies, commercial businesses and nonprofit/NGOs.  Solutions offered under EarthCube must be flexible, evolving and focused on the long-term vision of breaking down the silos that interfere with cross-community collaboration.

The ESIP Federation provides a neutral platform for Earth science data and technology practitioners to come together to collaborate on shared goals. ESIP offers support services in the way of collaboration spaces (wiki, telecons, web meetings) as well as formal and informal groups to address specific topics. Of course, the organization also has a governance structure, fine-tuned during the past decade but flexible in its approach so as to allow for new governance models to emerge as community needs arise (see Discovery Cluster governance approach). The ESIP Federation welcomes new participants from across the Earth sciences and technical communities to utilize this venue to advance the collective goal of interoperable data and integrated systems across the geosciences. By doing so, participants gain efficiencies in meeting their own organizational goals while contributing to the greater good.

We do not know how the ESIP Federation ultimately will contribute to the EarthCube initiative but what is clear, the community embodied in the ESIP Federation is an exemplar for the approach NSF is encouraging. Members of the ESIP community are actively contributing to the EarthCube dialogue in many ways. Some have contributed white papers from their home institutions as well as from the ESIP collaboration areas in which they are active. The ESIP community also has been active on the EarthCube Ning site and is contributing to many of the discussion forums.  Further, we, along with many of our members, expect to participate in the charrette in early November. In the end, as staff and leadership have considered the best approach for responding to the EarthCube challenge, we have concluded that ESIP should just be ESIP.