INTEROP: Creation of an international virtual data center for the biodiversity, ecological and environmental sciences

Under this project we will develop new community capacity and new technologies to support the design, implementation, and deployment of a Virtual Data Center (VDC) for biodiversity, ecological and environmental data—all founded on open standards and protocols for interoperability among existing and new data centers. We will design a reliable infrastructure that enables open, stable, persistent, robust, and secure access to well-described and logically organized biodiversity, ecological and environmental data. The system will consist of a virtual distributed network of data centers that seamlessly supports discovery and user-friendly access to a broad array of data, metadata, and other digital products that are archived securely and permanently in multiple locations. Semi-annual week-long meetings of Technical Working Groups (engaging information scientists from data centers representing many diverse disciplines), a developer, and numerous students will contribute to VDC prototypes and adopting and adapting basic system interoperability standards, such as the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting from the digital library community and various scientific community data exchange standards (e.g., SEEK EarthGrid protocols, the oceanographic communities' OPeNDAP protocol, Federal Geographic Data Committee Biological Data Profile, and the web community's grid service protocols).