The Climate-G Portal: The context, key features and a multi-dimensional analysis

Grid portals are web gateways aiming at concealing the underlying infrastructure through a pervasive, transparent, user-friendly, ubiquitous and seamless access to heterogeneous and geographically spread resources (i.e. storage, computational facilities, services, sensors, network and databases). The Climate-G Portal is the web gateway of the Climate-G testbed (an interdisciplinary research effort involving scientists both in Europe and US) and it is devoted to climate change research studies. The main goal of this paper is to present the Climate-G Portal providing a complete understanding of the international context, discussing its main requirements, challenges, architecture and key functionalities, and finally carrying out and presenting a multi-dimensional analysis of the Climate-G Portal, starting from a general schema proposed and discussed in this work.

► In this paper, a multi-dimensional analysis about Grid Portals is carried out.
► Three main phases such as Pioneeristic era, SOA vision and Broad Grid revolutions are described.
► The Climate-G initiative is introduced.
► The multi-dimensional analysis about the Climate-G Portal is presented.