Experiences of using a hybrid cloud to construct an environmental virtual observatory

Environmental science is often fragmented: data is collected using mismatched formats and conventions, and models are misaligned and run in isolation. Cloud computing offers a lot of potential in the way of resolving such issues by supporting data from differ-ent sources and at various scales, by facilitating the integration of models to create more sophisticated software services, and by pro-viding a sustainable source of suitable computational and storage resources. In this paper, we highlight some of our experiences in building the Environmental Virtual Observatory pilot (EVOp), a tailored cloud-based infrastructure and associated web-based tools designed to enable users from different backgrounds to access data concerning different environmental issues. We review our architec-ture design, the current deployment and prototypes. We also reflect on lessons learned. We believe that such experiences are of benefit to other scientific communities looking to assemble virtual obser-vatories or similar virtual research environments