Cyberinfrastructure
Encyclopedia
United States
federal research funders use the term cyberinfrastructure to describe research environments that support advanced data acquisition
, data storage
, data management
, data integration
, data mining
, data visualization
and other computing
and information processing services distributed over the Internet
beyond the scope of a single institution. In scientific usage, cyberinfrastructure is a technological and sociological solution to the problem of efficiently connecting laboratories, data, computers, and people with the goal of enabling derivation of novel scientific theories and knowledge.
had been popularized by Al Gore
in the 1990s.
This use of the term "cyberinfrastructure" evolved from the same thinking that produced Presidential Decision Directive NSC-63 on Protecting America's Critical Infrastructures (PDD-63). PDD-63 focuses on the security and vulnerability of the nation’s “cyber-based information systems
” as well as the critical infrastructures on which America’s military strength and economic well-being depend, such as the electric power grid, transportation networks, potable water and wastewater infrastructures.
The term "cyberinfrastructure" was used in a press briefing on PDD-63 on May 22, 1998 with Richard A. Clarke
, then national coordinator for security, infrastructure protection, and counter-terrorism, and Jeffrey Hunker
, who had just been named director of the critical infrastructure assurance office. Hunker stated:
The term "cyberinfrastructure" was used by a United States
National Science Foundation
(NSF) blue-ribbon committee in 2003 in response to the question: how can NSF, as the nation's premier agency funding basic research
, remove existing barriers to the rapid evolution of high performance computing
, making it truly usable by all the nation's scientist
s, engineer
s, scholars, and citizens? The NSF use of the term focuses on the integrated assemblage of these information technologies with one another.
A workshop on cyberinfrastructure for the social sciences was held in San Diego, California
in May 2005.
Another conference was held in January 2007 in Washington, DC.
A "CyberInfrastructure Partnership" existed from February 2005 until 2009.
A collaboration led by the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Boston University
had a web site called "Engaging People in Cyberinfrastructure" (EPIC) which existed from 2005 through 2007.
Complementing the technical construction of cyberinfrastructure, social scientists in the field of computer supported cooperative work
investigate the organizational and social aspects of building these large-scale, distributed resources to support science. Related to this research space is the notion of the collaboratory
, originally coined by William Wulf
.
Cyberinfrastructure is more often called e-Science
or e-Research. In particular, the United Kingdom
started an e-Science initiative in 2001.
Others distinguish e-Science as the work that is done using the cyberinfrastructure.
project in which the Grid Infrastructure Group led by University of Chicago
provided integration of resources and services that were operated by some of the US's supercomputing centers.
The nanoHUB
and its HUBzero software originally funded in 2002.
NSF funded the iPlant Collaborative
in 2008 for botany
support.
The United States Department of Energy
supports e-Science through high performance computing and other initiatives involving its laboratories, including:
The Department of Energy (Office of Science SciDAC-2 program from the High Energy Physics, Nuclear Physics and Advanced Software and Computing Research programs) and NSF (Math and Physical Sciences, Office of Cyberinfrastructure and Office of International Science and Engineering Directorates) support the Open Science Grid which is a consortium of more than 80 member institutions and alliances.
Other examples include:
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
federal research funders use the term cyberinfrastructure to describe research environments that support advanced data acquisition
Data acquisition
Data acquisition is the process of sampling signals that measure real world physical conditions and converting the resulting samples into digital numeric values that can be manipulated by a computer. Data acquisition systems typically convert analog waveforms into digital values for processing...
, data storage
Data storage device
thumb|200px|right|A reel-to-reel tape recorder .The magnetic tape is a data storage medium. The recorder is data storage equipment using a portable medium to store the data....
, data management
Data management
Data management comprises all the disciplines related to managing data as a valuable resource.- Overview :The official definition provided by DAMA International, the professional organization for those in the data management profession, is: "Data Resource Management is the development and execution...
, data integration
Data integration
Data integration involves combining data residing in different sources and providing users with a unified view of these data.This process becomes significant in a variety of situations, which include both commercial and scientific domains...
, data mining
Data mining
Data mining , a relatively young and interdisciplinary field of computer science is the process of discovering new patterns from large data sets involving methods at the intersection of artificial intelligence, machine learning, statistics and database systems...
, data visualization
Data visualization
Data visualization is the study of the visual representation of data, meaning "information that has been abstracted in some schematic form, including attributes or variables for the units of information"....
and other computing
Computing
Computing is usually defined as the activity of using and improving computer hardware and software. It is the computer-specific part of information technology...
and information processing services distributed over the Internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
beyond the scope of a single institution. In scientific usage, cyberinfrastructure is a technological and sociological solution to the problem of efficiently connecting laboratories, data, computers, and people with the goal of enabling derivation of novel scientific theories and knowledge.
Origin
The term National Information InfrastructureNational Information Infrastructure
The National Information Infrastructure was the product of the High Performance Computing and Communication Act of 1991. It was a telecommunications policy buzzword, which was popularized during the Clinton Administration under the leadership of Vice-President Al Gore...
had been popularized by Al Gore
Al Gore
Albert Arnold "Al" Gore, Jr. served as the 45th Vice President of the United States , under President Bill Clinton. He was the Democratic Party's nominee for President in the 2000 U.S. presidential election....
in the 1990s.
This use of the term "cyberinfrastructure" evolved from the same thinking that produced Presidential Decision Directive NSC-63 on Protecting America's Critical Infrastructures (PDD-63). PDD-63 focuses on the security and vulnerability of the nation’s “cyber-based information systems
Information systems
Information Systems is an academic/professional discipline bridging the business field and the well-defined computer science field that is evolving toward a new scientific area of study...
” as well as the critical infrastructures on which America’s military strength and economic well-being depend, such as the electric power grid, transportation networks, potable water and wastewater infrastructures.
The term "cyberinfrastructure" was used in a press briefing on PDD-63 on May 22, 1998 with Richard A. Clarke
Richard A. Clarke
Richard Alan Clarke was a U.S. government employee for 30 years, 1973–2003. He worked for the State Department during the presidency of Ronald Reagan. In 1992, President George H.W. Bush appointed him to chair the Counter-terrorism Security Group and to a seat on the United States National...
, then national coordinator for security, infrastructure protection, and counter-terrorism, and Jeffrey Hunker
Jeffrey Hunker
Jeffrey Hunker received his bachelor's degree from Harvard College and Ph.D. from Harvard Business School. He joined the Boston Consulting Group before becoming an advisor in the Department of Commerce and the founding director of the Critical Infrastructure Assurance Office...
, who had just been named director of the critical infrastructure assurance office. Hunker stated:
"One of the key conclusions of the President's commission that laid the intellectual framework for the President's announcement today was that while we certainly have a history of some real attacks, some very serious, to our cyber-infrastructure, the real threat lay in the future. And we can't say whether that's tomorrow or years hence. But we've been very successful as a country and as an economy in wiring together our critical infrastructures. This is a development that's taken place really over the last 10 or 15 years — the Internet, most obviously, but electric power, transportation systems, our banking and financial systems."
The term "cyberinfrastructure" was used by a United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
National Science Foundation
National Science Foundation
The National Science Foundation is a United States government agency that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National Institutes of Health...
(NSF) blue-ribbon committee in 2003 in response to the question: how can NSF, as the nation's premier agency funding basic research
Research
Research can be defined as the scientific search for knowledge, or as any systematic investigation, to establish novel facts, solve new or existing problems, prove new ideas, or develop new theories, usually using a scientific method...
, remove existing barriers to the rapid evolution of high performance computing
Computing
Computing is usually defined as the activity of using and improving computer hardware and software. It is the computer-specific part of information technology...
, making it truly usable by all the nation's scientist
Scientist
A scientist in a broad sense is one engaging in a systematic activity to acquire knowledge. In a more restricted sense, a scientist is an individual who uses the scientific method. The person may be an expert in one or more areas of science. This article focuses on the more restricted use of the word...
s, engineer
Engineer
An engineer is a professional practitioner of engineering, concerned with applying scientific knowledge, mathematics and ingenuity to develop solutions for technical problems. Engineers design materials, structures, machines and systems while considering the limitations imposed by practicality,...
s, scholars, and citizens? The NSF use of the term focuses on the integrated assemblage of these information technologies with one another.
A workshop on cyberinfrastructure for the social sciences was held in San Diego, California
San Diego, California
San Diego is the eighth-largest city in the United States and second-largest city in California. The city is located on the coast of the Pacific Ocean in Southern California, immediately adjacent to the Mexican border. The birthplace of California, San Diego is known for its mild year-round...
in May 2005.
Another conference was held in January 2007 in Washington, DC.
A "CyberInfrastructure Partnership" existed from February 2005 until 2009.
A collaboration led by the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Boston University
Boston University
Boston University is a private research university located in Boston, Massachusetts. With more than 4,000 faculty members and more than 31,000 students, Boston University is one of the largest private universities in the United States and one of Boston's largest employers...
had a web site called "Engaging People in Cyberinfrastructure" (EPIC) which existed from 2005 through 2007.
Complementing the technical construction of cyberinfrastructure, social scientists in the field of computer supported cooperative work
Computer supported cooperative work
The term computer-supported cooperative work was first coined by Irene Greif and Paul M. Cashman in 1984, at a workshop attended by individuals interested in using technology to support people in their work. At about this same time, in 1987 Dr...
investigate the organizational and social aspects of building these large-scale, distributed resources to support science. Related to this research space is the notion of the collaboratory
Collaboratory
A collaboratory, as defined by William Wulf in 1989, is a “center without walls, in which the nation’s researchers can perform their research without regard to physical location, interacting with colleagues, accessing instrumentation, sharing data and computational resources, [and] accessing...
, originally coined by William Wulf
William Wulf
William Allan Wulf is a computer scientist notable for his work in programming languages and compilers.Born in Chicago, Illinois, he attended the University of Illinois, receiving a BS in Engineering Physics and an MS in Electrical Engineering, then achieved the first Ph.D. in Computer Science...
.
Cyberinfrastructure is more often called e-Science
E-Science
E-Science is computationally intensive science that is carried out in highly distributed network environments, or science that uses immense data sets that require grid computing; the term sometimes includes technologies that enable distributed collaboration, such as the Access Grid...
or e-Research. In particular, the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
started an e-Science initiative in 2001.
Others distinguish e-Science as the work that is done using the cyberinfrastructure.
Examples
NSF's Office of Cyberinfrastructure, for example, supported the TeraGridTeraGrid
TeraGrid is an e-Science grid computing infrastructure combining resources at eleven partner sites. The project started in 2001 and operated from 2004 through 2011....
project in which the Grid Infrastructure Group led by University of Chicago
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...
provided integration of resources and services that were operated by some of the US's supercomputing centers.
The nanoHUB
Nanohub
nanoHUB.org is science cyberinfrastructure comprising community-contributed resources and geared toward educational applications, professional networking, and interactive simulation tools for nanotechnology...
and its HUBzero software originally funded in 2002.
NSF funded the iPlant Collaborative
IPlant Collaborative
The iPlant Collaborative is a virtual organization created by a cooperative agreement funded by the US National Science Foundation to create cyberinfrastructure for the plant sciences . The NSF compared cyberinfrastructure to physical infrastructure, ".....
in 2008 for botany
Botany
Botany, plant science, or plant biology is a branch of biology that involves the scientific study of plant life. Traditionally, botany also included the study of fungi, algae and viruses...
support.
The United States Department of Energy
United States Department of Energy
The United States Department of Energy is a Cabinet-level department of the United States government concerned with the United States' policies regarding energy and safety in handling nuclear material...
supports e-Science through high performance computing and other initiatives involving its laboratories, including:
- Argonne National LaboratoryArgonne National LaboratoryArgonne National Laboratory is the first science and engineering research national laboratory in the United States, receiving this designation on July 1, 1946. It is the largest national laboratory by size and scope in the Midwest...
- Lawrence Berkeley National LaboratoryLawrence Berkeley National LaboratoryThe Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory , is a U.S. Department of Energy national laboratory conducting unclassified scientific research. It is located on the grounds of the University of California, Berkeley, in the Berkeley Hills above the central campus...
- Stanford Linear Accelerator CenterStanford Linear Accelerator CenterThe SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, originally named Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, is a United States Department of Energy National Laboratory operated by Stanford University under the programmatic direction of the U.S...
- Oak Ridge National LaboratoryOak Ridge National LaboratoryOak Ridge National Laboratory is a multiprogram science and technology national laboratory managed for the United States Department of Energy by UT-Battelle. ORNL is the DOE's largest science and energy laboratory. ORNL is located in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, near Knoxville...
- Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory
The Department of Energy (Office of Science SciDAC-2 program from the High Energy Physics, Nuclear Physics and Advanced Software and Computing Research programs) and NSF (Math and Physical Sciences, Office of Cyberinfrastructure and Office of International Science and Engineering Directorates) support the Open Science Grid which is a consortium of more than 80 member institutions and alliances.
Other examples include:
- Open Science Grid ConsortiumOpen Science Grid ConsortiumThe Open Science Grid Consortium is an organization that administers a worldwide grid of technological resources called the Open Science Grid, which facilitates distributed computing for scientific research...
- DatanetDatanetThis article is about the U.S. National Science Foundation Office of Cyberinfrastructure . For the ISP, Datanet please visit Datanet .On September 28, 2007, the U.S. National Science Foundation Office of Cyberinfrastructure announced a request for proposals with the name Sustainable Digital Data...
- TeraGridTeraGridTeraGrid is an e-Science grid computing infrastructure combining resources at eleven partner sites. The project started in 2001 and operated from 2004 through 2011....
- National Center for Supercomputing ApplicationsNational Center for Supercomputing ApplicationsThe National Center for Supercomputing Applications is an American state-federal partnership to develop and deploy national-scale cyberinfrastructure that advances science and engineering. NCSA operates as a unit of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign but it provides high-performance...
- National LambdaRailNational LambdaRailNational LambdaRail is a , high-speed national network infrastructure owned and operated by the U.S. research and education community that runs over fiber-optic lines, and is the first transcontinental 10-Gigabit Ethernet network...
and Internet2Internet2Internet2 is an advanced not-for-profit US networking consortium led by members from the research and education communities, industry, and government.... - ICME cyberinfrastructureICME cyberinfrastructureIntegrated computational materials engineering involves the integration of experimental results, design models, simulations, and other computational data related to a variety of materials used in multiscale engineering and design...
Quotations
Cyberinfrastructure is the coordinated aggregate of software, hardwareHardwareHardware is a general term for equipment such as keys, locks, hinges, latches, handles, wire, chains, plumbing supplies, tools, utensils, cutlery and machine parts. Household hardware is typically sold in hardware stores....
and other technologies, as well as human expertise, required to support current and future discoveries in science and engineering. The challenge of Cyberinfrastructure is to integrate relevant and often disparate resources to provide a useful, usable, and enabling framework for research and discovery characterized by broad access and “end-to-end” coordination.
Cyberinfrastructure consists of computing systems, data storage systems, advanced instruments and data repositories, visualization environments, and people, all linked together by software and high performance networks to improve research productivity and enable breakthroughs not otherwise possible.
Like the physical infrastructure of roadRoadA road is a thoroughfare, route, or way on land between two places, which typically has been paved or otherwise improved to allow travel by some conveyance, including a horse, cart, or motor vehicle. Roads consist of one, or sometimes two, roadways each with one or more lanes and also any...
s, bridgeBridgeA bridge is a structure built to span physical obstacles such as a body of water, valley, or road, for the purpose of providing passage over the obstacle...
s, power grids, telephone lineTelephone lineA telephone line or telephone circuit is a single-user circuit on a telephone communication system...
s, and water systems that support modern society, cyberinfrastructure refers to the distributed computer, information and communication technologiesInformation technologyInformation technology is the acquisition, processing, storage and dissemination of vocal, pictorial, textual and numerical information by a microelectronics-based combination of computing and telecommunications...
combined with the personnel and integrating components that provide a long-term platform to empower the modern scientific research endeavor.
External links
- Natural Sciences domain
- Geosciences Network (GEON)
- National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON)
- NSF's Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI) Cyberinfrastructure
- DataONE, part of NSF DatanetDatanetThis article is about the U.S. National Science Foundation Office of Cyberinfrastructure . For the ISP, Datanet please visit Datanet .On September 28, 2007, the U.S. National Science Foundation Office of Cyberinfrastructure announced a request for proposals with the name Sustainable Digital Data...
initiative
- Social Sciences and Humanities domain