Due to its intensive data processing and highly distributed organization, the multidisciplinary Earth Science applications community is uniquely positioned for the uptake and exploitation of Grid technologies. Currently Enabling Grids for E-sciencE, and other large Grid infrastructures are already deployed and capable of operational services. So far however, the adoption and exploitation of Grid technology throughout the Earth Science community has been slower than expected. The Dissemination and Exploitation of GRids in Earth sciencE project, proposed by the European Commission to assist and accelerate this process in a number of different ways, had between its main goals the creation of a roadmap towards Earth Science Grid platform. This paper presents the resulting roadmap.

The fundamental challenges facing humankind at the beginning of the 21st century require an effective response to the massive changes that are putting increasing pressure on the environment and society. The worldwide Earth science community, with its mosaic of disciplines and players (academia, industry, national surveys, international organizations, and so forth), provides a scientific basis for addressing issues such as the development of new energy resources; a secure water supply; safe storage of nuclear waste; the analysis, modeling, and mitigation of climate changes; and the assessment of natural and industrial risks. In addition, the Earth science community provides short‐ and medium‐term prediction of weather and natural hazards in real time, and model simulations of a host of phenomena relating to the Earth and its space environment. These capabilities require that the Earth science community utilize, both in real and remote time, massive amounts of data, which are usually distributed among many different organizations and data centers.

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