User Support System in the Complex Environment

摘要

e-Science infrastructures have changed the process of research. Researchers can now access distributed data around the globe with the help of e-infrastructures. This is particularly a very important development for the developing countries. User support services play an important role to provide researchers with the required information needs to accomplish their research goals with the help of e-infrastructures. However, the current user-support practices in e-infrastructures in the climate domain are being followed on intuitive basis, hence over-burdening infrastructure development staffs who partly act as human support agents. The main contribution of this paper is to present the environmental complexity with-in the contemporary user support practices of climate science e-infrastructure known as Earth System Grid Federation (ESGF). ESGF is a leading distributed peer-to-peer (P2P) data-grid system in Earth System Modelling (ESM) having around 25000 users distributed all over the world.