This 84-page report defines the Cyberinfrastructure program proposed by the National Science Foundation (NSF). Here is the text of the news release from the University of Michigan School of Information:
" Atkins committee issues NSF report on development of cyberinfrastructure (Feb 2003)
A National Science Foundation (NSF) committee chaired by University of Michigan professor Daniel Atkins has recommended the organization spend an additional $1 billion per year developing the nation's "cyberinfrastructure" to support scientific research. The Advisory Committee on Cyberinfrastructure argues that investment in a comprehensive cyberinfrastructure can change profoundly what scientists and engineers do, how they do it, and who participates. Its recommendations are detailed in a newly released report titled Revolutionizing Science and Engineering through Cyberinfrastructure.
In the same way society now depends on highways, water systems, and power grids, the panel contends, scientific research in the coming years will depend on the quality of the cyberinfrastructure -- the integrated information, computing, and communications systems that tie us together. "It's not just the raw technology, but also the organization and the people," says Atkins, who is professor in the School of Information and the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at U-M. It's also the standards for interoperability that will allow different disciplines to use the same infrastructure, "just the way we agreed long ago on a standard gauge for railroad tracks."
"The path forward that this report envisions ... truly has the potential to revolutionize all fields of research and education," says Peter Freeman, assistant director of the NSF for Computer and Information Sciences and Engineering (CISE), the NSF arm that commissioned the report. The report was issued on the same day the NSF submitted its $5.48 billion budget request for fiscal year 2004.
"NSF has been a catalyst for creating the conditions for a nascent cyberinfrastructure-based revolution," says Atkins, a revolution being driven from the ground up. "We've clearly documented extensive grass-roots activity in the scientific and engineering research community to create and use cyberinfrastructure to empower the next wave of discovery."
The committee cites NSF support for such projects as the Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulations (NEES), the TeraGrid effort, and the Digital Libraries Initiative as seminal in the development of a cyberinfrastructure. At the same time, the report makes clear that the cyberinfrastructure needed cannot be built with today's off-the-shelf technology, and it argues for increased NSF support for fundamental research in computer science and engineering.
The report emphasizes the importance of acting quickly and the risks of failing to do so. Those risks include lack of coordination, which could leave key data in irreconcilable formats; long-term failures to archive and curate data collected at great expense; and artificial barriers between disciplines built from incompatible tools and structures.
The NSF has a "once-in-a-generation opportunity," according to the committee, to lead the scientific and engineering community in the coordinated development and expansive use of cyberinfrastructure."
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:arizona.edu/oai:arizona.openrepository.com:10150/106224 |
| Date | 01 1900 |
| Creators | Atkins, Daniel |
| Source Sets | University of Arizona |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Technical Report |
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