Context

This section provides context for the contents targeted by this architecture and design specification document, namely the OOI Integrated Observatory Network, in particular the OOI Cyberinfrastructure system.

Mission

In order to provide the U.S. ocean-sciences research community with access to the basic infrastructure required to make sustained, long-term and adaptive measurements in the oceans, the National Science Foundation (NSF) Ocean Sciences Division has initiated the Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI). The OOI is the outgrowth of many years of national and international scientific planning efforts. The OOI builds upon recent technological advances and experience with existing observatories, and is underpinned by several successful pilot and testbed projects. As these efforts mature, the research-focused observatories enabled by the OOI will be networked, becoming an integral part of the proposed Integrated and Sustained Ocean Observing System (IOOS; http://ioos.noaa.gov). IOOS is an operationally-focused national system, and in turn will be the enabling U.S. contribution to the international Global Ocean Observing System (GOOS; http://www.iocgoos.org) and the Global Earth Observing System of Systems (GEOSS; www.earthobservations.org).

Goals and Vision

The OOI (see Figure 1) comprises three types of interconnected observatories spanning global, regional and coastal scales. The global component addresses planetary-scale problems via a network of moored buoys linked to shore via satellite. A regional cabled observatory will 'wire' a single region in the Northeast Pacific Ocean with a high-speed optical and power grid. The coastal component of the OOI will expand existing coastal observing assets, providing extended opportunities to characterize the effects of high frequency forcing on the coastal environment. The OOI Cyberinfrastructure (CI) constitutes the integrating element that links and binds the three types of marine observatories and associated sensors into a coherent system-of-systems. An Education component will provide an infrastructure for education and public engagement applications. Indeed, it is most appropriate to view the OOI as a whole-the Integrated Observatory-that will allow scientists and citizens to view particular phenomena irrespective of the observing elements (e.g. coastal, global, regional, ships, satellites, IOOS...) to which the observations belong.

The objective of the OOI CI is provision of a comprehensive federated system of Observatories, Laboratories, Classrooms, and Facilities that realizes the OOI Mission. The infrastructure provided to research scientists through the OOI will include the cables, buoys, deployment platforms, moorings and junction boxes required for power and two-way data communication with a wide variety of sensors at the sea surface, in the water column, and at or beneath the seafloor. The initiative also includes components such as unified project management, data dissemination and archiving and education and outreach activities essential to the long-term success of ocean observatory science. A fully operational research observatory system would be expected to meet the following goals:

• Continuous observations at time scales of seconds to decades
• Spatial measurements from millimeters to kilometers
• Sustained operation during storms and other severe conditions
• Real-time or near-real-time data as appropriate
• Two-way transmission of data and remote instrument control
• Power delivery to sensors between the sea surface and the seafloor
• Standard plug-n-play sensor interface protocol
• Autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) dock for data download/battery recharge
• Access to deployment and maintenance vehicles that satisfy the needs of specific observatories
• Facilities for instrument maintenance and calibration
• A management system that makes data publicly available
• An effective education and outreach program

Figure 1. OOI Components (AV-1)

The vision of the OOI CI is to provide the OOI user base, beginning with the science community, access to a system that enables simple and direct use of OOI resources to accomplish their scientific objectives. This vision includes direct access to instrument data, control, and operational activities described above, and the opportunity to seamlessly collaborate with other scientists, institutions, projects, and disciplines.

The core capabilities and the principal objectives of ocean observatories are collecting real-time data, analyzing data and modeling the ocean on multiple scales and enabling adaptive experimentation within the ocean. A traditional data-centric CI, in which a central data management system ingests data and serves them to users on a query basis, is not sufficient to accomplish the range of tasks ocean scientists will engage in when the OOI is implemented. Instead, a highly distributed set of capabilities are required that facilitate:

• End-to-end data preservation and access,
• End-to-end, human-to-machine and machine-to-machine control of how data are collected and analyzed,
• Direct, closed loop interaction of models with the data acquisition process,
• Virtual collaborations created on demand to drive data-model coupling and share ocean observatory resources (e.g., instruments, networks, computing, storage and workflows),
• End-to-end preservation of the ocean observatory process and its outcomes, and
• Automation of the planning and prosecution of observational programs.

Figure 2 shows the of closed loop scientific investigation activities enabled by OOI integrated observatory, based on Cyberinfrastructure capabilities. Observations from various sources are assimilated and feed into models of the ocean such as ROMS, the Regional Ocean Modeling System. Their output feeds into analyses and that are subsequently exploited for refining future observations and sensor configurations, for instance by providing specific taskings of observing programs using gliders.

Figure 2. Closed Loop Scientific Investigation Activities supported by the CI (OV-1)

In addition to these features, the CI must provide the background messaging, governance and service frameworks that facilitate interaction in a shared environment, similar to the role of the operating system on a computer.

The OOI system construction will occur during the confluence of several significant technology innovations in web and distributed processing: semantic webs, social networks, Grid computing, sensor networks, service-oriented architectures (SOA), event-driven architectures, policy-based security and machine virtualization. Each offers different capabilities, and each may increase the scope and reliability of the OOI system while lowering its complexity and cost. The challenge to building the CI at this time of convergence is finding an appropriate integration architecture and roadmap to deliver a functioning system as early as possible, while maintaining the ability to refine and extend operating characteristics as technology evolves.

Science Drivers for the OOI Integrated Observatory

The community over the last decade has identified high priority science needs, and the OOI has been designed to quantitatively address these questions. This is especially critical as the oceans are changing in our lifetimes, and developing a quantitative understanding of relevant processes is crucial to understanding the possible trajectories of these changes and potential impacts on human society. The OOI will provide scientists a sustained presence in extreme ocean environments, enabling fundamental discoveries. Given the need to develop a quantitative picture of the ocean, scientists require spatial time series spanning many scales across a range of marine biomes. Most importantly scientists require the ability to measure the interactions at the boundaries between the ocean-atmosphere-sea floor- and coasts. Fully sampling the ocean is not possible so the OOI has focused on deploying instruments capable of resolving a range of scales on the boundaries of the oceanic gyres which represent regions that play a disproportionately large role influencing the cycling of energy, elements, and biota on Earth. The OOI will accomplish this by deploying a distributed but linked infrastructure in regions to enable the collection of data that will allow fundamental processes to be characterized across a range of marine systems. The spatially distributed full OOI network will be required to quantitatively test our understanding of the high priority science questions. The infrastructure will allow scientists to quantify the interactions between the sea floor and the overlying water column using regional scale cabled networks, the interaction between the atmosphere and the ocean with novel robust networks capable of the withstanding the extreme weather, and nested robotic grids to resolve the interaction between the deep sea and coastal arrays.

Given this, there is a need to develop a robust Cyberinfrastructure to allow all of the distributed assets to be coordinated in an integrated manner. These assets will be used to address many scientific questions reflecting the scientific diversity of the earth system science community.

The science motivating the OOI network is based on the research community input. The numerous community reports emphasized the need for simultaneous, interdisciplinary measurements to investigate a spectrum of phenomena, from episodic, short-lived events (tectonic, volcanic, biological, severe storms), to more subtle, longer-term changes in ocean systems (circulation patterns, climate change, ecosystem trends). The introduction of high power and bandwidth will allow the transition from ship-based data collection to the management of interactive, adaptive sampling in response to remote recognition of an "event" taking place. Sophisticated CI tools will enable individual and communities of researchers to tackle their specific research questions. The following are integrative examples of some of the broad science questions that the OOI network will be able to address (see [SCIPROSP).

• What is the ocean's role in the global cycle?
• How important are extremes of surface forcing in the exchange of momentum, heat, water and gases between the ocean and atmosphere?
• How important are severe storms and other episodic mixing processes affect the physical, chemical, and biological water column processes?
• How does plate scale deformation mediate fluid flow, chemical and heat fluxes, and microbial productivity?
• What are the forces acting on plates and plate boundaries that give rise to local and regional deformation and what is the relation between the localization of deformation and the physical structure of the coupled astenosphere-lithosphere system?
• How do tectonic, oceanographic and biologic processes modulate the flux of carbon into and out of the submarine gas hydrate "capacitor," and are there dynamic feedbacks between the gas hydrate methane reservoir and other benthic, oceanic and atmospheric processes?
• How do cyclical climate signals at the ENSO, NAO and PDO timescales structure the water column and what the corresponding impacts on the chemistry and biology in the ocean?
• What are the dynamics of hypoxia on continental shelves?

Researching answers to these science questions involves the combination of several science and engineering activities, that need to be supported by the different components of the OOI program, including sensors, 24/7 marine observatory infrastructure and cyber-infrastructure components. Specific user requirements coming from the community have been elicited successfully in the seven user requirements workshops held 2007 and 2008, see [CI-RWS1, CI-RWS2, CI-ROOP, CI-RDPG, CI-RIOM, CI-REPE, CI-RUA].

Education and Public Engagement (EPE)

The education goals and the key science questions that frame the OOI infrastructure are tightly coupled. The science questions provide the interdisciplinary context for effective marine education that, in turn, develops the intellectual capital needed to build research capacity and an ocean literate and engaged public. The goal of elevating ocean literacy recognizes the vital relationship between society and the ocean, and will require sustained educational efforts targeted at multiple audience levels. The OOI cyber-infrastructure will provide the technological platform to make unique educational contributions to both "free-choice" audiences and post-secondary learners.

The ability to engage and serve a range of education providers and communities and to encourage partnerships between researchers and educators will be a critical contribution of OOI infrastructure. These efforts will help ensure that national and international policy and science priorities are simultaneously addressed at a variety of scales (global to local) and tailored to account for differences in geographic regions, cultural diversity, digital capabilities, as well as different ocean uses, interactions, and phenomena within these areas. The OOI will participate in a nationally "coordinated effort to develop and promote a comprehensive education message about the ocean and its role in the Earth System, and to enable the use of ocean-observing data for management and educational purposes" (NSTC-JSOST, 2007).

The nine EPE drivers listed below define the overall focus of the OOI education effort and the purpose of creating the EPE Implementing Organization (IO) as part of the OOI. These drivers (i.e., high-level requirements) were developed by the OOI EPE Planning Group using expert input and discussion at the EPE Drivers and Requirements Workshop. OOI Education and Public Engagement Drivers include:

• The OOI will enable communication, education, and public engagement efforts that tightly interweave the key OOI science themes with the essential principles of ocean literacy.
• The OOI will support online post secondary training programs with a focus on increasing participation and diversity in ocean science and technical careers. It will also support "free choice" learning in a variety of both physical and virtual settings with a focus on increasing public engagement with ocean science and technology.
• The OOI will enable multiple forms of access to and engagement with the development path and construction history of the OOI enterprise in order to support innovative engineering and technology education.
• The OOI will have the capacity to engage and respond to audiences of diverse cultural or economic backgrounds, or who may traditionally have been underserved in ocean education.
• The OOI will enable multiple forms of interaction and collaboration that assist in the formation of ocean policy at both national and international levels.
• The OOI will support enhanced field experiences for students engaged in OOI activities including construction, operation, maintenance, and research.
• The OOI will enable multiple forms of interaction and collaboration that facilitate networked community access among scientists, engineers, and educators.
• The OOI will enable open access to EPE data products, visualizations, and other educational materials developed as part of the OOI effort for a wide range of users.
• The OOI will be developed in collaboration with, and support of, the national community of marine education providers, in order to leverage the unique contributions of the OOI and to more effectively reach a broad audience.

Organizational Context

Figure 3 shows the OOI organizational structure. The central element is the OOI Program Office, run by the Consortium for Ocean Leadership (COL), which provides overall project management and oversight functions for the implementing organizations and sponsors an extensive advisory committee structure.

 
Figure 3. OOI and CI Organization Chart (OV-4)

The Program Office headed by a Program Director and reports both to the JOI Board of Governors and to the National Science Foundation. The three implementing organizations for the regional scale node (RSN), coastal-global scale node (CSGN), and cyber-infrastructure elements (CI) report to the project office through the OOI Director of Engineering. A fourth implementing organization for education and public engagement (EPE) is planned.

The OOI Advisory Committees advise the Program Office on policies and procedures for observatory operations, usage, and data management, approve annual OOI Science and Operations Plans, and carry out program planning and development functions.

The Cyberinfrastructure implementing organization defines several teams: The architecture team (ADT) is responsible for maintaining a consistent architecture of the CI system, designing the CI system and its interfaces to the other OOI components, reflecting the stakeholder concerns and providing the specifications for construction. The system development effort comprises six subsystem integrated product teams (IPT) and an integration test and validation (ITV) team, and works together with the ADT to ensure compliance with the design and standards. The ITV team carries out system integration and system level testing activities. The operations and maintenance team (O&M) is responsible for the actual operation of the constructed system from the time the first release transitions to operation. The quality management (QM) team carries out ongoing quality assurance and control activities during the design/build cycle.