NSF Safe-OSE: Enhancing Safety, Security, and Privacy in the Community Earth System Model (CESM) Ecosystem

NSF Award Search · 01002526DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT · $1,500,000 · view on nsf.gov ↗

Abstract

This Safety, Security, and Privacy of Open-Source Ecosystems (Safe-OSE) project aims to improve the safety, security, and privacy of the Community Earth System Model (CESM), an important open-source tool used to simulate Earth systems and predict events like hurricanes, floods, droughts, and wildfires. CESM helps guide critical decisions in areas such as disaster response, agriculture, energy planning, public health, and national defense. The project develops a security framework to identify and fix weaknesses in the CESM code and its software supply chain, preventing potential backdoors and cyber threats. The project will also improve automated testing, streamline software updates, and raise awareness among developers about secure coding practices. By making CESM more secure and reliable, this effort will serve as a model for upgrading the security of other scientific software used across sectors. This Safe-OSE project begins by refactoring the CESM codebase to address foundational barriers to integrating modern security practices. This includes decoupling computational and control logic to support modularization and rewriting the control layer in Python to enable modernization. Building on this foundation, this project develops three clusters of automated security techniques: (1) static analysis using a query engine, compiler-time testing, and large language models tailored to CESM structure; (2) dynamic testing via targeted unit and regression tests for scientific workf

Key facts

NSF award ID
2533222
Awardee
University of Colorado at Boulder (CO)
SAM.gov UEI
SPVKK1RC2MZ3
PI
Yueqi Chen
Primary program
01002526DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT
All programs
TECH FOR SUSTAINABLE ENVIRONMENT, Cyber Secur - Cyberinfrastruc
Estimated total
$1,500,000
Funds obligated
$1,500,000
Transaction type
Cooperative Agreement
Period
10/01/2025 → 09/30/2027