The federation of earth science information partners (ESIP) is a broad-based, distributed community of science, data and information technology practitioners that was created by NASA in 1998. NASA…

The federation of earth science information partners (ESIP) is a broad-based, distributed community of science, data and information technology practitioners that was created by NASA in 1998. NASA invests in and depends heavily on the science, management, and engagement capabilities of its partners. In order to support these investments during a 3-year period, we propose to convene a series of virtual and face-to-face technical meetings, workshops and conferences that leverage the ESIP federation as a coordination network in order to support the overarching strategies named in NASA's 2011 strategic plan with the funding of this proposal, NASA will contribute to sustaining the ESIP community with support for the core services that provide on-going virtual and face-to-face collaborative meetings. This collaborative space provides an open forum for exchanging best practices, experimenting with new technologies and allowing the entire community to leverage shared expertise. Sustaining the ESIP federation ensures that the NASA contributions to standards and processes, when formalized are adopted widely and help the larger community and that there is feedback into NASA S own development processes. While most of what the ESIP federation undertakes is done in a virtual and distributed way, the organization historically has held technical meetings twice each year. Working across multiple domains and with a focus on the entire data lifecycle, the ESIP federation draws on the expertise of its partners to discuss current trends, problems and emerging issues affecting the community. The community sets the organization's agenda, based on the common needs of partners participating in the ESIP federation. This approach is important because the experts drive how the community will approach data and systems development across the widely-distributed systems that deliver earth science data to users at every point in the data lifecycle. Using the ESIP federation's collaboration infrastructure in support of both face-to-face and regular virtual meetings, the ESIP federation provides a forum for on-going community collaborations to occur. The activities support NASA's technical, applied science and intra-agency connection goals and leverage the ESIP federation partnership to advance its mission. This proposal focuses on technical, applied science and education activities, all of which take advantage of the ESIP federation infrastructure supporting both in-person and virtual meetings. The activities contained herein support the following overarching strategies named in NASA's 2011 strategic plan: # investing in next-generation technologies and approaches to spur innovation; # inspiring students to be our future scientists, engineers, explorers, and educators through interactions with NASA's people, missions, research and facilities; # expanding partnerships with international, intergovernmental, academic, industrial, and entrepreneurial communities and recognizing their role as important contributors of skill and creativity to our missions and for the propagation of our results; # committing to environmental stewardship through earth observation and science, and the development and use of green technologies and capabilities in NASA missions and facilities. The work of the ESIP federation is facilitated and managed by the FOUNDATION for earth science (FOUNDATION), created in 2001 to serve as the secretariat for the federation. The activities proposed will be achieved by contributions from the ESIP federation community, its formal structures (committees, working groups, and clusters), its elected leadership and staff. Carol meyer, executive director will serve as principal investigator and karl benedict, ESIP federation president, annette schloss, ESIP federation vice president and erin robinson, information and virtual community director will serve as CO-investigators.