Raskin Scholar: Cloud Computing for Earth Science

Earth sciences pose grand challenges for computing technology, especially, in aspect of data intensity, computing intensity, and concurrent intensity. These intensity challenges are well reflected in Earth science modeling and geospatial data processing/analyzing. Cloud computing provides a potential solution to handle the intensity challenges of Earth science by 1) providing on-demand and scalable computing resources to ensure adequate computing power for Earth science model simulation, and 2) enabling distributed data management and parallel data processing in a flexible and scalable manner. Two research examples are used to demonstrate how cloud computing can be utilized to 1) support Earth science modeling through Model as a Service, and 2) support big geospatial data analysis by building a cloud-enabled scientific workflow platform. The research examples show that cloud computing provides a potential computing infrastructure that enables the computability of Earth sciences.