SCHOOL OF INFORMATION UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN The Coming of Cyberinfrastructure Gary M. Olson

SCHOOL OF INFORMATION UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN Cyberinfrastructure “Infrastructure” – used since the 1920’s to refer to the roads, bridges, rail lines, and similar public works required for an industrial economy “Cyberinfrastructure” – infrastructure based on computer, information, and communication technology used for discovery, dissemination, and preservation of knowledge Cyberinfrastructure – required for an information economy

SCHOOL OF INFORMATION UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN NSF Cyberinfrastructure Report Blue Ribbon commission

SCHOOL OF INFORMATION UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN Process NSF will make cyberinfrastructure a major initiative Hosted a series of workshops and on-line town meetings New division of CISE formed Coordinated with other federal agencies – NIH, DARPA, DOE, NASA

SCHOOL OF INFORMATION UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN Cyberinfrastructure: the Middle Layer Computation, Storage, Communication and Interface Technologies Cyber-infrastructure: Equipment, Software, People, Institutions Virtual teams, communities, organizations, knowledge environments/ecologies

SCHOOL OF INFORMATION UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN Capability not just capacity: technology, policy, tools. Varying levels of need – mix of commercial and special-purpose tools Computation

SCHOOL OF INFORMATION UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN Cyberinfrastructure - more than ICT Equipment: hardware, software, boxes, wires,… Organizations Policies Processes Reliability Sustainability Trained human resources to create, operate, apply.

SCHOOL OF INFORMATION UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN Adoption of cyberinfrastructure Mix of technical and social issues – Raw technology – Standards – Utility – Network effects

SCHOOL OF INFORMATION UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN Example: Electronic Mail ARPA had time sharing system with messaging (J. Licklider) ARPANET operational w/ 4 nodes UCLA, UCSB, Utah, SRI – 1971, 23 nodes – 1973, 45 nodes – 1976, 111 nodes 1975, more than 1000 registered users on ARPANET 1978, Usenet for non-ARPANET universities Proliferation of networks in late 70s, early 80s TCP/IP as networking standard --> Internet in mid 80s

SCHOOL OF INFORMATION UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN Needs for Cyberinfrastructure Many needs articulated in CI report But the ability to handle large amounts of data the most widely expressed need

SCHOOL OF INFORMATION UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN Examples of needs NEESgrid – earthquake engineering data HIV/AIDS – large scale clinical trials Ecology – integration in time and space BIRN – brain images National virtual observatory – astronomy data High energy physics – outputs from high end accelerators

SCHOOL OF INFORMATION UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN Issues for large amounts of data (1) ScienceTechnicalSocialOrganizational Federating data bases ●●● Metadata ●● Access rights ●●●● Security ●●● Access speed ●● Size, storage capacity ●● Storage speed ●●

SCHOOL OF INFORMATION UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN Issues for large amounts of data (2) ScienceTechnicalSocialOrganizational Provenance ●●●● Standards ●● Data mining techniques ●● Institutionalization of data sources ●● Quality control ●● Training ●● Legacy data ●●●●

SCHOOL OF INFORMATION UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN Broader Implications These issues apply to any effort to create large, federated data sets NSF and other federal agencies will be pushing hard on these issues Cooperation with private sector will be critical – Both have common needs – That’s likely to be where the technology will come from

SCHOOL OF INFORMATION UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN For Further Information Science of Collaboratories Project – Collaboratory for Research on Electronic Work (CREW) –