Observatory Middleware Framework (OMF)

Abstract

Large observatory projects (such as the Large Synoptic Sky Telescope (LSST), the Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI), the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON), and the Water and Environmental Research System (WATERS)) are poised to provide independent, national-scale in-situ and remote sensing cyberinfrastructures to gather and publish “community”-sensed data and generate synthesized products for their respective research communities. However, because a common observatory management middleware does not yet exist, each is building its own customized mechanism to generate and publish both derived and raw data to its own constituents, resulting in inefficiency and unnecessary redundancy of effort, as well as proving problematic for the efficient aggregation of sensor data from different observatories. The Observatory Middleware Framework (OMF) presented here is a prototype of a generalized middleware framework intended to reduce duplication of functionality across observatories. OMF is currently being validated through a series of bench tests and through pilot implementations to be deployed on the Monterey Ocean Observing System (MOOS) and Monterey Accelerated Research System (MARS) observatories, culminating in a demonstration of a multi-observatory use case scenario. While our current efforts are in collaboration with the ocean research community, we look for opportunities to pilot test capabilities in other observatory domains.