The AKN uses Grid Technologies and standard bioinformatic processes to federate the disparate data resources of the bird-monitoring community.

1. Data providers map their existing data bases to the Bird Monitoring Data Exchange (metadata extension of Darwin Core).
2.  DiGIR client/portal software is used to federate distributed data sets. The data federation places all contents into the Primary Data Warehouse located within the  AKN engine layer via the Internet.
3. The Primary Data Warehouse is backed-up (off-site) using persistent archive technologies. Briefly, the AKN data backups are done regularly and are stored on a RAID 5 disk array. They are also copied offsite to tape using Cornell University's enterprise-quality central backup system.
4. An access control module limits data use.
5. A separate warehouse of environmental covariables is also available in the AKN engine layer. These covariables include: landcover, U.S. Census data, weather, and include over 200 variables.
6. Depending on the access control requirements and analysis application, subsets of the data stored in the  primary data warehouse and covariable warehouse are merged into warehouse summaries.
   
7. An application interface layer allows the development of analysis or data visualization tools, and provides access to a variety of third party websites to link to the Warehouse Summaries. (note: at no time is the Primary Data Warehouse directly linked to the Access Nodes).
8. Any organization can create applications that interact with the application interface layer and use data stored in a variety of Warehouse Summaries.