Earth System scientists integrate knowledge stemming from disciplines focused on constituent parts of the complex earth system. Earth-system analysis poses a real challenge to both scientists and information technologists. The scope and complexity of these investigations demand the formation of multidisciplinary collaborative teams. This requires integration of differing information systems with heterogeneous and distributed data and metadata models, varying semantics and expertise, diverse protocols and interfaces and different data policies and security levels. Advanced cyber-infrastructures provide necessary support for the growing multidisciplinary Earth System Science Community.

Crosswalks
The Institute of Methodologies for Environmental Analysis (IMAA) is an Italian National Research Council (CNR) institution. Its main activities concern the study of the atmosphere and of the earth's surface, and of human impact on these, using remote sensing and environmental and geophysical monitoring. IMAA is an Italian Civil Protection Department (Prime Ministerial cabinet) centre of competence. The IMAA Earth and Space Science Informatics Laboratory (ESSI-Lab) was established to facilitate effective and seamless provision of earth and space resources for Information Society applications. ESSI-Lab research focuses on the application of information and communications technologies to manage, share and harmonise Earth and Space Science data, information, services and knowledge within the framework of Geospatial Information (GI) technologies and infrastructures. Hence a major objective is to develop crosswalks between Earth Science and GI communities, investigating interoperability solutions.

Societal Benefit
ESSI-Lab has gained knowledge and experience in models, languages and services dealing with Earth and Space Sciences information, and in standards and services for imagery, coverage and gridded data, as well as spatial data infrastructures employing web and GRID resources. ESSI-Lab experts participate as Italian delegates in the activities of international standardisation groups such as ISO TC/211, CEN TC 287 and DGIWG. IMAA is involved in international initiatives such as GMES, GEOSS and INSPIRE. Societal benefit application areas include Global Monitoring, Civil Protection Risks, Climate Change and Biodiversity.

GEOSS
IMAA became a member of the Open Geospatial Consortium Inc (OGC) in 2003 and began to implement and experiment with OGC standards to investigate benefits and open issues concerning adoption of GI standards for Earth Science communities. Accomplishments include ncML-GML, a Web Coverage Service (WCS) extension for netCDF-CF, application profiles for Catalog Services (CS-W) and co-initiation of the GALEON (Geo-interface to Atmosphere, Land, Earth, Ocean netCDF) Interoperability Experiment. IMAA is currently active in WCS, CS-W, GALEON phase 2 and the INSPIRE initiatives, and in implementing OGC Web Services on top of EGEE, the reference European GRID infrastructure. IMAA is also active in the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS) initiative. The intergovernmental Group on Earth Observations (GEO) is leading a worldwide effort to build such as system over the next ten years.