C3Grid - Collaborative Climate Community Data and Processing Grid
The project “Collaborative Climate Community Data and Processing Grid – C3Gridâ€, sponsored by the German Ministry for Research and Education (BMBF), aims at building up a grid infrastructure for a seamless and fast access to the traditional data resources in Earth System Sciences. This is essential for effective data processing and analysis.
In Climate research and Earth System Sciences different data sources from simulation runs of coupled earth system models and a multitude of observational data are combined. These data sets are often of high volume and are distributed over many archives and sites worldwide. Furthermore they have different states with respect to general accessibility, format, description and data quality. Therefore the daily work of a researcher in this field consists of tedious procedures for data
access, data quality control and extraction, before he is able to even start the process of scientific evaluation of theses data sets. It is obvious, that only a common platform with uniform access mechanisms and standardized data descriptions can substantially improve the scientists’ ability to use this data in a successful way to explore and explain the earth system.
The C3Grid Mission Statement essentially reflects this situation by
The project 'Collaborative Climate Community Data and Processing
Grid – C3Grid', sponsored by the German Ministry for Research and
Education (BMBF), aims at building up a grid infrastructure for a
seamless and fast access to the traditional data resources in Earth
System Sciences. This is essential for effective data processing and
analysis.
In Climate research and Earth System Sciences different data sources
from simulation runs of coupled earth system models and a multitude
of observational data are combined. These data sets are often of high
volume and are distributed over many archives and sites worldwide.
Furthermore they have different states with respect to general accessibility,
format, description and data quality. Therefore the daily work
of a researcher in this field consists of tedious procedures for data
access, data quality control and extraction, before he is able to even
start the process of scientific evaluation of theses data sets. It is obvious,
that only a common platform with uniform access mechanisms
and standardized data descriptions can substantially improve the scientists’
ability to use this data in a successful way to explore and explain
the earth system.
The C3Grid Mission Statement essentially reflects this situation by
- enhancing uniform and easy access to distributed and heterogeneous data sources,
- adopting a workflow-oriented approach,
- provisioning standardized data descriptions based on ISO standards, and
- delivering combined storage and processing facilities for scientists.
The C3Grid uses available software and applies international standard architecture whenever possible. This ensures the sustainability of all the developed services. Standard components from D-Grid DGI like Globus Toolkit 4.x and GridSphere provide the basis middleware complemented by some C3Grid-specific components. Besides especially for scheduling and data management proprietary developments are deployed to meet the community-specific requirements. C3Grid is developed in close collaboration with international grid projects, e.g. EGEE, Nerc Data Grid and Earth System Grid.
