Strategies for enabling software reuse within the Earth Science Community

The Earth Sciences software development community is often challenged to provide cost effective, highly reliable and easy-to-use software to achieve scientific missions. In the process, the NASA Earth Science Enterprise (ESE) spends a significant amount of resources developing software components and other software development artifacts that may also be of value if reused in other projects requiring similar functionality. A recent study performed under the NASA's Strategic Evolution of ESE Data Systems (SEEDS) initiative suggests that reuse of ESE software can drive down the cost and time of system development, increase flexibility and responsiveness of these systems to new technologies and requirements; and increase effective and accountable community participation. In 2004, the Earth Science Software Reuse Working Group was created to oversee the development of a process that maximizes the reuse potential of existing software components while recommending strategies for maximizing the reusability potential of yet-to-be-designed components.