Earth Science Information Partners, Vision for the Future of Cyberinfrastructure

ESIP is a community of data and information technology practitioners who collaborate across Earth science organizations. Our response comes from the perspective of maximizing technical and organizational cooperation among diverse entities. First, the challenge of overcoming technical, institutional, and cultural barriers for pursuing transformative, interdisciplinary Earth and Space science. Another challenge is building semantic understanding across different research communities seamlessly. Fully taking advantage of the analytical resources available through big earth science data is another challenge, and the last is better support for research code and information provenance to improve and expedite research reproducibility. Regarding specific cyberinfrastructure needs, the first is support for data driven knowledge development via collaborative analytics and visualization. Another recommendation is that NSF leverages existing infrastructures and opportunities for partnering instead of duplicating or creating competing resources. The last need is for project support and sustainability, to transition projects into a next funding phase as appropriate. Our response concludes with an additional consideration regarding education. All stakeholders benefit from education emphasizing aspects of data curation, management, and data and software stewardship. ESIP recommends a multidisciplinary approach to cyberinfrastructure training to support current, as well as future researchers.