Networked Cyber-Physical Systems (NCPS) play an essential role in modern society by efficiently controlling and managing critical services. Such N-CPS' have noticeable advantages over traditional Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS), including ease of use and control, better services and system management, better resource utilization, ability to use Commercial Off The Shelf (COTS) components, and improved reliability and fault-tolerant services at the cost of increased complexity. Adopting N-CPS adds challenges in cybersecurity, system development, systems management, and training, necessitating a federated cloud platform to support collaborative N-CPS research. This Federated Cloud Platform for Networked Cyber-Physical Systems (FCP-NCPS) will enable researchers to address N-CPS security, interoperability, management, and training challenges while enabling the creation of realistic datasets for research in data analytics and cybersecurity. This planning grant will enable: 1) to organize research community and industry workshops in the Tucson Area, Baltimore Area, and Detroit Area to discuss the needs and exchange research ideas addressable through the FCP-NCPS; 2) Organizing workshops with teaching and K-12 schools in Tucson, Baltimore, and Detroit areas to discuss and understand their needs to impart training in CPS to their students. These activities will allow: 1) Creation of a community cloud platform for seamless integration of diverse CPS testbeds that are syntactically, semantically, and geographically separated for realistic experimentation to address N-CPS security, interoperability, management, and training challenges; 2) to develop a dataset collection framework integrated into the federated system to address the scarcity of realistic datasets in the fields of cybersecurity, and data analytics; 3) to provide a community infrastructure for imparting realistic, practical (hands-on) training to students to address the nation's N-CPS workforce requirements. The FCP-NCPS being a scalable community research platform, will also find applications in different fields, including expanding interpretability and the trustworthiness of Artificial Intelligence (AI), experimentation of medical devices and medical training practices, and experimentation and evolution of autonomous systems, to name a few. Moreover, the proposed Federated Cloud Platform will aid the global research community (especially in the developing world) in performing realistic experimentation and evaluating their research ideas to advance the frontiers of science. Information on FCP-NCPS is available at https://fcpncps.arizona.edu. This site will host all the content for the FCP-NCPS, including the project information, APIs, documentation, and datasets, for the duration of the project and three years after its termination. This project is a collaboration between the University of Arizona, University of Detroit-Mercy, Johns Hopkins University, and Riverside Research. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.