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Unidata's mission is to provide the data services, tools, and cyberinfrastructure leadership that advance Earth system science, enhance educational opportunities, and broaden participation. Over 170 institutions worldwide participate in the Unidata data sharing network and many more institutions use Unidata tools and technologies in education, research, and operations. While its primary mission of serving the academic community remains unchanged through the years, the user base has broadened and its activities and responsibilities grown as community needs have evolved.
Unidata's hallmark has been democratizing access to data and tools. In doing so, Unidata has experienced a gradual but natural evolution from a program focused primarily on meteorology to one that serves a broader geosciences community across the world. Unidata has attracted a broader community because it has been successful in providing tools and services that are interoperable, extensible, platform independent, and free. The robustness and quality of Unidata tools and services have resulted in their use beyond a community of several hundred universities, by organizations such as the NWS and other weather agencies around the world, NOAA laboratories, NASA, NRL, and ECMWF, as well as many companies in the private sector. In the process, Unidata has matured into a cornerstone facility upon which the geosciences community and other stakeholders have come to rely.
This gradual metamorphosis has been shaped by the changing landscape as environmental, scientific, educational, and societal priorities have evolved due to a growing shift toward integrative and collaborative science. Today, the Unidata community includes researchers, educators, and students in many geoscience and engineering departments, unconstrained by international boundaries.
Unidata's analysis and visualization tool, the Integrated Data Viewer (IDV) is now used by over 200 institutions, has been very successful in integrating data from various sources, in providing useful visualizations of georeferenced data from other geoscience disciplines, in demonstrating the usefulness of innovative display technologies, and in providing an end-to-end application for testing and improving Unidata's data collections and data access infrastructure software. Because of its many unique capabilities (e.g., 3D views and remote data access via multiple data access protocols), the community of IDV users has grown significantly in the last five years. Unidata focuses on developing and enhancing the IDV and its software framework to provide multidisciplinary, collaborative analysis and visualization capabilities to facilitate integrative science and interactive, inquiry-based learning.
This talk will provide an overview of Unidata's efforts to broaden its community to other disciplines and strengthen international scientific partnerships. The presentation will focus on Unidata's philosophy of organic community broadening through sharing of data, software, and technologies, and by leveraging strategic partnerships with other organizations.
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