An Empirical Analysis of Worldwide Cyberinfrastructure

Abstract

Cyberinfrastructure is a research infrastructure that provides an environment in which research communities can get access to distributed resources and collaborate at unprecedented levels of computation, storage, and network capacity. The Worldwide LHC Computing Grid (WLCG) is a global collaborative project of computing or data centers that enables access to scientific data generated by the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) experiments at CERN. This case study analyzes the WLCG as a model of cyberinfrastructure in research collaboration. WLCG provides a useful case of how cyberinfrastructure can work in providing an infrastructure for collaborative researches under data-intensive paradigm. Cyberinfrastructure plays the critical role of facilitating collaboration of diverse and widely separated communities of researchers. Data-intensive science requires new strategies for research support and significant development of cyberinfrastructure. The sustainability of WLCG depends on the resources of partner organizations and virtual organizations at international levels, essential for research collaboration.