Abstract
The National Antarctic Data Center (NADC) is the ICT infrastructure
designed to gather, handle, publish and provide access to the large
amount of scientific data collected by several projects in the framework
of the Italian Antarctic National Research Program (PRNA). Aim of the
infrastructure is to provide a single integrated system that allows the
final users to easily access and share data wherever they are stored.
The architecture is based on a System-of-Systems (SoS) concept: a set of
systems (functional nodes) interconnected together with each other by
means of mediation and adaptation services running on a central
infrastructure (common node). The common node is managed by the five
Organizations (CNR, INGV, ENEA, OGS, MNA) that contribute to the NADC
and is devoted to a regular harvesting of the metadata. Each functional
node consists of an existing metadata and data management system
implemented by each Organization. Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e
Vulcanologia (INGV) hosts one of those functional nodes and it is
managing, among others, data/metadata produced by the permanent
geomagnetic and ionospheric observatories installed in Antarctica since
1985. The functional nodes are interconnected and federated together by
means of interfaces and standard data/metadata models. This distributed
architecture allows to interconnect heterogeneous systems and digital
infrastructures in a flexible, scalable and sustainable way. This paper
describes the general infrastructure and, as an example of functional
node, the contribution of the data management related to the Antarctic
Ionospheric and Geomagnetic Observatories managed by INGV at Mario
Zucchelli station (74°41′42″S, 164°06′50.4″E) and Concordia base
(75°05′59.91″S, 123°19′57.38″E).