Multidisciplinary Interoperability for Earth Observations: Some Architectural Issues

The scope and complexity of Earth Observation investigations require advanced digital infrastructures supporting multidisciplinary information sharing and interoperability. The existing cyber(e)-infrastructures are often designed either for disciplinary applications, or for addressing specific challenges (e.g. high performance computing). However, moving towards an effective multidisciplinary support poses new architectural and technological challenges to observation infrastructures. This paper introduces and discusses promising Information Technology (IT) solutions facilitating multidisciplinary interoperability to advance existing Earth Observation interoperability.