Using Soft Systems Methodology (SSM) in understanding the current user-support scenario in the Climate Science Domain of Cyber-infrastructures

Cyber-infrastructures have transformed the practice of research. Researchers can now access distributed data worldwide with the help of cyber-infrastructures. User support services play an important role to facilitate researchers to accomplish their research goals with the help of cyber-infrastructures. However, the current user-support practices in cyber-infrastructures are not properly organized (at least in climate cyber-infrastructures) thus over-burdening human support agents. The paper describes the study conducted to evaluate the geographically distributed user-support system currently in practice in the leading cyber-infrastructure namely Earth System Grid Federation (ESGF). The members of the investigation team found out that the user-support in ESGF, a global climate cyber-infrastructure need more attention to make it resourceful as well as standardized. The findings about end-user support system were modelled using soft systems methodology (SSM). This approach helped to present the findings of this study to stakeholders in order to capture their feedback about the current system to further improve the system.