Create a NASA jupyterhub/Colab instance to do data analysis in a cloud framework about transform-to-open-science

[hmjbarbosa]

I think Steve's suggestion is great. As someone at a university, I can say it is hard to pull large volumes of data from NASA, NOAA, and other sources just to work locally. It would be a tremendous contribution to the scientific community if something along the lines of this suggestion were to be implemented.

[cgentemann]

Yes, we are exploring how this might work. For now, there are things like MyBinder that provide ephemeral cloud access to a small machine. The Pangeo community used to provide access to larger machines - but they were attacked by bitcoin miners, see discussion here. There is need for both public access to cloud resources and NASA-funded researcher access. Right now it seems that until a longer term solution is developed, science teams are contracting out access for cloud-based access to pre-configured Jupyter Hubs.

[choldgraf]

Hey all 👋 I'm the director of 2i2c, a non-profit that manages and supports customized JupyterHubs for communities of practice in research and education. We've run several hubs that are similar to what @swnesbitt is describing in the top comment.

For example, we've been running a hub for the OpenScapes team to use in their community workshops, as well as for the OceanHackWeek team to use during their workshops. We also run all of Pangeo's cloud-based interactive computing infrastructure now (and we are working on getting a Binder up and running for Pangeo as well...we have made some progress on the crypto-mining front though that is an ongoing challenge in this space).

If I can be of any help either in brainstorming and discussing, or if you think that 2i2c could help provide infrastructure such as this, I'd be happy to speak further! I agree with @swnesbitt's post above that these kinds of hosted environments can be a huge help in making the infrastructure more accessible to beginners and veterans alike.

[swnesbitt]

Great to hear that @cgentemann. Yes security is a challenge and right now the ephemeraility seems to be the primary way to get around that. Increasing cloud accessibility (availability and ease of use/authentication) of NASA datasets across the DAACs is another piece of this - there has been some progress in some areas which has made it a lot easier to work with these data (cloud services, API tools and authentication help), while others are more challenging and require visiting http sites or use of “shopping carts”. Thanks!