The Global Observing System Information Center (GOSIC)

To address the problems of global change, systems are being developed to collect and manage large amounts of data on a variety of physical, chemical, and biological variables pertaining to the atmosphere, the oceans, and the land. These systems are being developed by the Global Climate Observing System, the Global Ocean Observing System, and the Global Terrestrial Observing System. The three systems are usually referred to as the G3OS. The G3OS have established a developmental project at the College of Marine Studies of the University of Delaware to design and implement an operational information center. This center is to provide a single point of access to the data collected by the three systems and also to related information and data products. GOSIC is in the third year of its first phase of development and has evolved a variety of approaches, strategies, and examples for single-point access to a highly distributed operational data and information system.

Traditional approaches to such an information center have usually been based on bringing the information to a central point and maintaining it and the access to it on a single site. GOSIC has taken the approach of centralizing information with a low rate of change (frequency of panel meetings or design changes) but of distributing the maintenance of the high-rate-of-change information to the data centers that are most closely involved with the production of that information. Access to this information is provided via links in GOSIC and a locally managed web page in the data center. The challenge has been to come up with simple and practical requirements and techniques to ensure that the data centers are not asked to take on labor-intensive tasks, and that the information they develop and maintain is useful to the data center and its clients as well as to the clients of GOSIC. If there are not such mutual benefits this cooperative arrangement will not be successful.

GOSIC is based on four main components. A data set registry (operated by the NASA Global Change Master Directory on behalf of GOSIC with joint access to the directory records) provides a directory-level search capability for historical and currently operational data sets relevant to the programs of the G3OS. URLs in the directory records provide access to the holders of the data and supporting data products and information.