The aim of this award is to provide strategic coordination for a series of US and international activities that focus on e-infrastructure and data management challenges in an effort to deliver effective end-to-end (basic research to decision making) global environmental research by facilitating collaboration among engineers, computer, natural, and social scientists from the United States and many countries across the globe through a Knowledge Hub. The funds will be used to support the collaboration between US researchers and approximately 120 researchers from the 13 participating Belmont Forum countries and the coordination of the strategic network of activities through a secretariat. Knowledge Hub activities such as virtual working groups and in-person workshops will focus on two thematic areas: governance and interoperability in architectures.
The resulting e-Infrastructure and Data Management activities will address interoperability challenges across the globe and integrate national and international research efforts to promote more holistic environmental decision support systems for global environmental change research. A key outcome of these collaborative efforts will be enhanced interoperability among global environmental data that will help develop beneficial societal products.
The coordination of these e-infrastructure and data management activities represents an extraordinary opportunity to bring together international leaders in interoperability, standards development, and various aspects of governance to seek a synoptic world vision. This program will create opportunities for enhancing the career trajectories of a new generation of researchers in the U.S. and across the globe. The activities will expose US early-career scientists to interdisciplinary, multi-institutional activities focused on environmental data and cyberinfrastructure where they can benefit not only from the US participants but also their counterparts from 13 other countries.