GeoAccessNO willl analyse the current status of geoscientific data management (both physical and digital dataset), software management and analysis tools, documentation of data and software, chaining of data and software and work flow management at a national and international level. It is exploring technologies and existing systems and frameworks in order to establish a demonstrator offering an integrated view on the elements listed above. Involvement of users is key to a successfull project, and GeoAccessNo will therefore facilitate two workshops. One within the first year to analyse the current status and collect viewpoints from the community on the plans and one in the last year demonstrating the potential and collecting feedback from the community.

Much of the work is devoted to collection of material to properly understand the current status nationally and internationally, ensuring that the effort is in line with relevant international structures. Based on this analysis a demonstrator will be developed, effectively integrating data and software.  This pilot will be built on existing components for data management and work flow management, adaptation of these and extensions where required. The work flow management and portal solution will be based on the Galaxy framework already being used for bioinformatics and language science nationally. In particular, the framework has been adapted at USIT (UiO) to include common authentication modules, HPC back-end, and provisioning for accounting and handling of large files. Data management will be based on existing data catalogues like NORMAP (in itself a physically distributed data management system) and Arctic Data Centre which both offer HTTP, OPeNDAP and OGC WMS access to datasets. It also relates to the NordataNet proposal. The whole system will be a distributed system and the intention is to adapt the solution that is already integrated with the NorStore/NOTUR e-infrastructure facilities. The end result will be a web-based portal, or frontend, to computational and data management resources.

GeoAccessNO is coordinated by Met Norway, and partners include the Nansen Center, University of Bergen (Geophysical Institute) and University of Oslo (Universitetets senter for informasjonsteknologi).