These two projects (the Integrated Data Management System for CZOs and the Community Information Model project) provide guidance for developing consistent semantics, metadata, formats, protocols, and a central data discovery portal and interface for online data visualization. We are creating a web-based environment to serve the IML-CZO observatory scientists, the broader CZO network, and the general public, with the goal of building an environment that provides the community easy access to disparate data, data aggregations, and data products through the web to support modeling.

The system will use standard RESTful interfaces to provide access via web browsers and enable community members to query the system using their own tools, such as local scripts, workflows, or custom tools. The environment will also provide a JavaScript API that community members can use to create custom web applications that meet specific needs.

The proposed system will be driven by data (stored or acquired in real-time) and data types and provide access to:

• Data collections of multi-process origin;
• Data discovery, visualization, and retrieval of data for future analyses; and
• Data interaction and integration with automated analytics and physical process models.

Through this three-tiered approach, we plan to separate the client layer from the middleware service layer and, in turn, from the data source layer to allow the system to scale horizontally as new resources are added and new data products are defined.