A Globus Toolkit 4 Based Instrument Service For Environmental Data Acquisition And Distribution

In this paper we describe our experiences in the field of integration of geographically distributed instruments in a grid environment based on web services provided by the Globus Toolkit 4. Our first goal is to develop a common instrument interface system, based on standard interoperable components, in order to share data acquisition resources on the grid in a secure and homogeneous way and then distribute data in a grid aware content network fashion. We rely on previous developed components as our Job Flow Scheduler Service, the Resource Broker Service and the GrADS Data Service to achieve the result of a self advertised set of atmospheric and ocean data acquisition instruments as weather stations, marine surface current high frequency radars and wind profilers. We provide an example based on our grid aware virtual laboratory for environmental modeling showing how the instrument service integrates into the system, performing on line analysis and assessments on operational weather forecast model behavior. The software components we describe in this work, leveraging on the content distribution network approach, contribute to the grand challenge in the search of grid computing killer applications in the field of applied computational environmental sciences.