| This work presents the GIIDA (Gestione Integrata e Interoperativa dei Dati Ambientali del CNR) inter-departimental project of the Italian National Research Council (CNR). The project is an initiative of the Earth and Environment Department (Dipartimento Terra e Ambiente) of the CNR.
GIIDA mission is “To implement the Spatial Information Infrastructure (SII) of CNR for Environmental and Earth Observation data”. The project aims to design and develop a multidisciplinary cyber-infrastructure for the management, processing and evaluation of Earth and environmental data. This infrastructure will contribute to the Italian presence in international projects and initiatives, such as: INSPIRE, GMES, GEOSS and SEIS. The main GIIDA goals are:
• Networking: To create a network of CNR Institutes for implementing a common information space and sharing spatial resources.
• Observation: Re-engineering the environmental observation system of CNR
• Modeling: Re-engineering the environmental modeling system del CNR
• Processing: Re-engineering the environmental processing system del CNR
• Mediation: To define mediation methods and instruments for implementing the international interoperability standards.
The project started in July 2008 releasing a specification document of the GIIDA architecture for interoperability and security. Based on these documents, a Call for Proposals was issued in September 2008. GIIDA received 23 proposed pilots from 16 different Institutes belonging to five CNR Departments and from 15 non-CNR Institutions (e.g. three Italian regional administrations, three national research centers, four universities, some SMEs). These pilot were divided into thematic areas. In fact, GIIDA considers seven main thematic areas/domains:
• Biodiversity;
• Climate Changes;
• Air Quality;
• Soil and Water Quality;
• Risks;
• Infrastructures for Research and Public Administrations;
• Sea and Marine resources
Each of these thematic areas is covered by a Working Group which coordinates the activities and the achievements of the respective pilots. Working Groups are called to develop for each area: 1) a specific Web Portal; 2) a thematic catalog service; 3) a thematic thesaurus service; 4) a thematic Wiki; 5) standard access and view services for thematic resources –such as: datasets, models, and processing services; 6) a couple of significant use scenarios to be demonstrated. |