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United States federal research funders use the term cyberinfrastructure to describe research environments that support advanced
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, abbreviated by the acro ...
,
data storage Data storage is the recording (storing) of information (data) in a storage medium. Handwriting, phonographic recording, magnetic tape, and optical discs are all examples of storage media. Biological molecules such as RNA and DNA are consi ...
,
data management Data management comprises all disciplines related to handling data as a valuable resource. Concept The concept of data management arose in the 1980s as technology moved from sequential processing (first punched cards, then magnetic tape) to ...
,
data integration Data integration involves combining data residing in different sources and providing users with a unified view of them. This process becomes significant in a variety of situations, which include both commercial (such as when two similar companies ...
, data mining,
data visualization Data and information visualization (data viz or info viz) is an interdisciplinary field that deals with the graphic representation of data and information. It is a particularly efficient way of communicating when the data or information is nu ...
and other
computing Computing is any goal-oriented activity requiring, benefiting from, or creating computing machinery. It includes the study and experimentation of algorithmic processes, and development of both hardware and software. Computing has scientific, ...
and information processing services distributed over the
Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, p ...
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 Infrastructure had been popularized by
Al Gore Albert Arnold Gore Jr. (born March 31, 1948) is an American politician, businessman, and environmentalist who served as the 45th vice president of the United States from 1993 to 2001 under President Bill Clinton. Gore was the Democratic ...
in the 1990s. This use of the term "cyberinfrastructure" evolved from the same thinking that produced
Presidential Decision Directive National security directives are presidential directives issued for the National Security Council (NSC). Starting with Harry Truman, every president since the founding of the National Security Council in 1947 has issued national security 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 An information system (IS) is a formal, sociotechnical, organizational system designed to collect, process, store, and distribute information. From a sociotechnical perspective, information systems are composed by four components: task, people ...
" 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 Jeffrey Hunker (January 20, 1957 – May 31, 2013) was an American cyber security consultant and writer. Biography Hunker received his bachelor's degree from Harvard College and Ph.D. from Harvard Business School. He joined the Boston Consulting ...
, 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 US
National Science Foundation The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent agency of the United States government that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National ...
(NSF) blue-ribbon committee in 2003 in response to the question: how can NSF, as the nation's premier agency funding basic
research Research is "creative and systematic work undertaken to increase the stock of knowledge". It involves the collection, organization and analysis of evidence to increase understanding of a topic, characterized by a particular attentiveness ...
, remove existing barriers to the rapid evolution of high performance
computing Computing is any goal-oriented activity requiring, benefiting from, or creating computing machinery. It includes the study and experimentation of algorithmic processes, and development of both hardware and software. Computing has scientific, ...
, making it truly usable by all the nation's
scientist A scientist is a person who conducts scientific research to advance knowledge in an area of the natural sciences. In classical antiquity, there was no real ancient analog of a modern scientist. Instead, philosophers engaged in the philosop ...
s,
engineer Engineers, as practitioners of engineering, are professionals who Invention, invent, design, analyze, build and test machines, complex systems, structures, gadgets and materials to fulfill functional objectives and requirements while considerin ...
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 ( , ; ) is a city on the Pacific Ocean coast of Southern California located immediately adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. With a 2020 population of 1,386,932, it is the eighth most populous city in the United Stat ...
in May 2005. Another conference was held in January 2007 in Washington, D.C. A "CyberInfrastructure Partnership" existed from February 2005 until 2009. A collaboration led by the
University of Wisconsin–Madison A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United Stat ...
and
Boston University Boston University (BU) is a private research university in Boston, Massachusetts. The university is nonsectarian, but has a historical affiliation with the United Methodist Church. It was founded in 1839 by Methodists with its original cam ...
had a web site called "Engaging People in Cyberinfrastructure" (EPIC) which existed from 2005 through 2007. Two NSF sponsored workshops on Financial Cyberinfrastructure were organized in 2010 and 2012 by Louiqa Raschid and Albert "Pete" Kyle
University of Maryland The University of Maryland, College Park (University of Maryland, UMD, or simply Maryland) is a public land-grant research university in College Park, Maryland. Founded in 1856, UMD is the flagship institution of the University System of ...
, H.V. Jagadish
University of Michigan , mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth" , former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821) , budget = $10.3 billion (2021) , endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...
and Mark Flood Office of Financial Research, Department of the Treasury. Complementing the technical construction of cyberinfrastructure, social scientists in the field of
computer supported cooperative work Computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW) is the study of how people utilize technology collaboratively, often towards a shared goal. CSCW addresses how computer systems can support collaborative activity and coordination. More specifically, the ...
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 William Allan Wulf (born December 8, 1939) is a computer scientist notable for his work in programming languages and compilers. Until June 2012, he was a university professor and the AT&T Professor of Engineering and Applied Sciences in the Depart ...
. Cyberinfrastructure is more often called
e-Science E-Science or eScience 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 dist ...
or e-Research. In particular, the
United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and ...
started an e-Science initiative in 2001.; the
Systems Geology Systems geology emphasizes the nature of geology as a system – that is, as a set of interacting parts that function as a whole. The systems approach involves study of the linkages or interfaces between the component objects and processes at all ...
initiative of the
British Geological Survey The British Geological Survey (BGS) is a partly publicly funded body which aims to advance geoscientific knowledge of the United Kingdom landmass and its continental shelf by means of systematic surveying, monitoring and research. The BGS hea ...
is an example. Others distinguish e-Science as the work that is done using the cyberinfrastructure. There are many inter-governmental advisory groups related to Cyberinfrastructure aspects like E-Infrastructures Reflection Group and European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures dealing with policies on electronic infrastructures for research, i.e. research networks, computing, software and data infrastructures that mainly serve students, researchers and scientists. They advise and recommend actions towards the European Commission (DG CONNECT), the EU Member states governments (Research or Science Ministries), e-Infrastructure providers and users.


Examples

NSF's Office of Cyberinfrastructure, for example, supported the
TeraGrid TeraGrid was an e-Science grid computing infrastructure combining resources at eleven partner sites. The project started in 2001 and operated from 2004 through 2011. The TeraGrid integrated high-performance computers, data resources and tools, a ...
project in which the Grid Infrastructure Group led by
University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...
provided integration of resources and services that were operated by some of the US's supercomputing centers. This project has now evolved to the
Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment TeraGrid was an e-Science grid computing infrastructure combining resources at eleven partner sites. The project started in 2001 and operated from 2004 through 2011. The TeraGrid integrated high-performance computers, data resources and tools, ...
(XSEDE) project, led by the
National Center for Supercomputing Applications The National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) is a state-federal partnership to develop and deploy national-scale computer infrastructure that advances research, science and engineering based in the United States. NCSA operates as a ...
. The nanoHUB and its HUBzero software originally funded in 2002 is an important cyberinfrastructure that is seeing continued usage. Cyberinfrastructure is often specialized toward domains in science and engineering. For example, NSF funded a large cyberinfrastructure for earthquake engineering called NEEShub at Purdue University from 2009-15. NSF funded the iPlant Collaborative in 2008 to support
plant sciences Botany, also called , plant biology or phytology, is the science of plant life and a branch of biology. A botanist, plant scientist or phytologist is a scientist who specialises in this field. The term "botany" comes from the Ancient Gree ...
, including data-intensive plant genomics and phylogenetics. Mississippi State University created an Integrated Computational Materials Engineering (ICME) cyberinfrastructure in 2010 that focuses on multiscale modeling. The
United States Department of Energy The United States Department of Energy (DOE) is an executive department of the U.S. federal government that oversees U.S. national energy policy and manages the research and development of nuclear power and nuclear weapons in the United States ...
supports e-Science through high performance computing and other initiatives involving its laboratories, including: *
Argonne National Laboratory Argonne National Laboratory is a science and engineering research national laboratory operated by UChicago Argonne LLC for the United States Department of Energy. The facility is located in Lemont, Illinois, outside of Chicago, and is the l ...
*
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), commonly referred to as the Berkeley Lab, is a United States national laboratory that is owned by, and conducts scientific research on behalf of, the United States Department of Energy. Located in ...
*
Stanford Linear Accelerator Center SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, originally named the 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. Departme ...
*
Oak Ridge National Laboratory Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) is a U.S. multiprogram science and technology national laboratory sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and administered, managed, and operated by UT–Battelle as a federally funded research an ...
*
Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), located just outside Batavia, Illinois, near Chicago, is a United States Department of Energy national laboratory specializing in high-energy particle physics. Since 2007, Fermilab has been operat ...
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 The 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. Founded in 2004, the consortium is co ...
which is a consortium of more than 80 member institutions and alliances. Other examples include: *
Open Science Grid Consortium The 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. Founded in 2004, the consortium is co ...
* Datanet *
Globus Globus is Latin for ''sphere'' or ''globe''. It may also refer to: Business * Globus Medical, a medical device company in Audubon, PA * Globus (clothing retailer), an Indian clothing retail store * Globus (company), a Swiss department store ch ...
* XSEDE *
National Center for Supercomputing Applications The National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) is a state-federal partnership to develop and deploy national-scale computer infrastructure that advances research, science and engineering based in the United States. NCSA operates as a ...
* National LambdaRail and Internet2 * ICME cyberinfrastructure


See also

* Data infrastructure *
Grid computing Grid computing is the use of widely distributed computer resources to reach a common goal. A computing grid can be thought of as a distributed system with non-interactive workloads that involve many files. Grid computing is distinguished from ...
* Collaboratory *
Systems Geology Systems geology emphasizes the nature of geology as a system – that is, as a set of interacting parts that function as a whole. The systems approach involves study of the linkages or interfaces between the component objects and processes at all ...


References

{{Reflist


External links

* Natural Sciences domain *
Geosciences Network (GEON)
*
National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON)
*
NSF's Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI) Cyberinfrastructure
*
DataONE
part of NSF Datanet initiative * Social Sciences and Humanities domain *
ACLS (American Council of Learned Societies) Report on Cyberinfrastructure for the Humanities & Social Sciences

NSF Division of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure (ACI)
E-Science IT infrastructure