The ESIP Semantic Technologies Committee will be hosting a one day GeoSemantics Symposium. The event will be held at Bethesda North Marriott (the same location as the ESIP meeting) with the intention to bring together the geoscience community interest in Semantic Web, and more broadly Semantic Technologies, to discuss potential collaborations, reuse, and road mapping. We’d like to fully leverage all of the semantic work happening in our respective communities, avoid duplication of effort, and work towards a broad community-endorsed path forward.
We seek broad community input and encourage non-ESIP members and members of other professional societies to attend. The event itself is free; however, attendees will be responsible for providing their own travel and lodging. The exact room within the Marriott is still being worked out and will be provided in future announcements. Also, suggestions for topics to be covered are welcome.
This award is named for Martha E. Maiden, now retired NASA Program Executive for Earth Data Systems. Ms. Maiden is widely credited for nurturing ESIP in its infancy and has overseen its growth and maturity. In honor of Ms. Maiden’s leadership, dedication and tireless efforts to nurture ESIP into a vibrant and mature organization, this award was established in 2009 to recognize outstanding service to the Earth science information community. The award honors individuals who have demonstrated leadership, dedication and a collaborative spirit in advancing the field of Earth Science information.
Architecting for the Cloud is a non-trivial effort. It is a multi-faceted process. While commercial and Private clouds have been around for over a decade, cost is still the key factor inhibiting cloud adoption. While countless studies have been published over the years, estimating the Total Cost of Ownership is still a domain-specific effort. This session invites presentations focusing on sharing their experiences, best practices, cost analysis conducted by organizations, missions, and projects. Some of the potential areas of interests
Speakers
The question of achieving sustainable funding for research/science software is an active topic of concern. Many of us are familiar with the anecdotal stories of successful (or not) community engagement and funding diversification in open source software projects; in this session, we're opening up the floor to for folks to share success stories, not-quite-success stories and current approaches and concerns in sustainable software across project size and type. We'll start the session with informal lightning talks, getting at the following:
As we consider the activities, through governance, community engagement and funding approaches, we can start to understand what guidance we can provide, for managing projects over a long lifecycle and for addressing requirements in sustainability plans, and where we find gaps to support data-driven feedback in those areas.
Documentation means many things to many people. This informal session will include a discussion on what documentation means to the cluster, on the topics the documentation cluster is interested in covering in 2017 and setting a new theme for 2017. As new co-chairs, we also welcome the chance to meet documentation cluster members in person!
Recommendations for the Use of Knowledge Organisation Systems by GBIF http://www.gbif.org/resource/80656
Pereira, H. M. et al. 2013. Essential Biodiversity Variables. Science. DOI: 10.1126/science.1229931
GOOS Biology and Ecosystems Panel. http://goosocean.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=79&Ite...
A Framework for Ocean Observing. By the Task Team for an Integrated Framework for Sustained Ocean Observing, UNESCO 2012, IOC/INF-1284 rev., doi: 10.5270/OceanObs09-FOO
IOOS Core Variables http://www.iooc.us/activities/biological-integration-observation-task-team/
GCOOS sample datasets aligned with DC terms via the OBIS enrollment process (see attached doc): http://gcoos4.tamu.edu:8080/erddap/search/index.html?page=1&itemsPerPage...
GBIF-TDWG Vocabulary Management Task Group: http://community.gbif.org/pg/groups/21382/, http://terms.tdwg.org/wiki/, http://terms.tdwg.org/wiki/Audubon_Core
The Ecosystem Ontology (ECSO) of measurements, http://bioportal.bioontology.org/ontologies/ECSO/
The goals of the Information Quality Cluster (IQC) as expressed in the Strategic Plan are: 1. Bring together people from various disciplines to assess aspects of quality of Earth science data; 2. Establish and publish baseline of standards and best practices for data quality for adoption by inter-agency and international data providers; and 3. Build a framework for consistent capture, harmonization, and presentation of data quality for the purposes of climate change studies, Earth science and applications. Moving towards these goals, the IQC has been collecting and evaluating use cases to help identify issues and analyze them to arrive at recommendations for improvements in capturing, describing, enabling discovery and facilitating use of data quality information. The purpose of this session will be to collaborate with other ESIP clusters whose primary emphasis is on utilization of Earth science data for research and applications. The purpose of the collaboration will be to answer questions such as: What type of quality information is needed for their applications? Are they easy to find? Are they complete and easy to understand? What level of data quality is important for their applications (what can they “get away with”? What improvements should be made in conveying quality information?
A brief introduction will be provided to familiarize new attendees with the IQC. Brief presentations will be made by invited panelists from other ESIP clusters such as the Disaster Lifecycle Cluster and Agriculture and Climate Cluster representing data users’ perspectives, and a panelist from the data provider community. The presentation will be followed by a discussion period to identify gaps and approaches to filling the gaps and addressing issues.
Agenda:
An increasingly wide range of applications for unmanned aerial systems (UAS) in data and Earth sciences has become possible with the miniaturization of powerful sensors and user-friendly flight hardware adopted from the world of model aviation. As tools for collecting innovative remote sensing data and geospatial analysis open doors for researchers, the Drone Cluster is exploring a number of applications for UAS in terms of Earth science research and software/data management approaches.
The goal for this session is to drill down into the innovative and powerful ways of using UAS data as one part of a larger confluence of geospatial datasets in two unique aspects: (1) how the emergence of low-altitude aerial imagery collected by UAS can be linked to satellite data; and (2) what data fusion or integration techniques are possible with the variety of image or monitoring sensors from numerous sources and UAS platforms. We will hear from people working on projects that use UAS within a larger research context to understand how different datasets are being linked, the operational and data processing techniques used to render useful geospatial products, and the challenges presented by data collection and processing via UAS.
This session will frame the use of UAS data by having a variety of speakers give lightning talks on the ways they are using UAS data in and amongst other datasets from multiple sources and in a variety of Earth science contexts, for example natural disasters, forest/biomass monitoring, and agriculture. They will present an overview of their work and the specific techniques employed on their projects. There will be a panel discussion from members of the ESIP community on various data related challenges inherent with integrating UAS into Earth science research, especially with respect to the need of data/metadata standardization, which remains a significant consideration when combining UAS data with other data sources.
The Earth Science Data Analytics (ESDA) Cluster is in a state of transition, going from the theoretical discussion of "What is Earth Science Data Analytics" to connecting more to the practice and technical barriers and solutions that exist within this realm. The ESDA Cluster is currently working to connect between Earth Scientists and Data Professionals (Data Scientistis, Managers, etc). We have identified within our own ESIP Cluster a serieis of data anlytics challenges within various earth science domains, and will use these (and other solicited challenges) as a launching point to further our Cluster Activities / Discussion during the ESIP Winter Meeting. Managing data the way it is needed to answer a given question and yet be made useful for others
From here, the ESDA Cluster has identified two potential ways of going forward:1. Examining/prototyping technical analytics solutions 2. Soliciting challenges from scientists; Connect Earth Scientists with Data Scientists
For either perspectives, we will have a series of speakers and challenges identified from the earth science community, by both: use a ‘Calling all Scientists’ to attend the ESDA Session and Solicit Earth Scientist Data usage challenges to accomplish the two goals of this session (1) Make the connections between Earth Scientists with Data Scientists (2) explore technical solutions that may address challenges
The Partnership for Resilience and Preparedness (PREP) is a public-private collaboration to empower a data-driven approach to building climate resilience. PREP aims to help planners, investors, and resource managers more easily incorporate climate risks into their decisions by enhancing access to relevant data and facilitating collective learning through insights on climate change. PREP does this through:
* Engagement
* Data
* Platforms
In this session we will introduce PREP through a series of short talks:
We will then discuss two complimentary efforts:
Over the past couple of years research data stewardship platforms and tools have grown substantially. Yet when we say "grown" it may not be quite in the way one might think. Instead of growing larger as a unit, a measurement of growth here is in a systems ability to connect and the perception of relevance and utility of that system to the user communities. In this session we propose to introduce several platforms and initiatives within the research data management realm that exhibit this enhanced capacity to connect with the user on their terms. These platforms are unique in their missions yet they also connect with one another in ways that advance the overall utility for the user. We would like to get a larger picture of the current work of several of these entities, their common threads, and the specific projects with which they are engaged.
The session will include the following six individuals representing research data platform products that exemplify these qualities. These include:
By leveraging the ways these entities work together in the user's favor, this in turn helps to solve the issue of too many disperate and unsustainable singular operations. As Simon Porter (2016) notes, system boundaries are disappearing and in its place emerges a "new research information citizenship" - one based on a network of contributors not confined to one specific system. Looking at these groups we can begin to see this emerging. The platforms and their utilities are of interest to ESIP members on several different levels. They represent some of the latest work in user-centered research data platforms and they also focus on openness, transparency, and ways to foster connections among different stakeholders and data user groups. In turn ESIP provides a unique venue for these platforms to explore new ways to work with the communities most engaged in working with multiple types of earth science data.
The session will conclude with a discussion of gaps and the path forward.
Science, Digital; Porter, Simon (2016): Digital Science White Paper: A New ‘Research Data Mechanics’. figshare.https://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.3514859.v1Retrieved: 16 56, Oct 27, 2016 (GMT)
Please find the agenda for the CDF General Assembly Meeting which will take place on 12-13 January 2017 in Bethesda, Maryland.
Registering CDF members in RE3 (15 Min) Bob Arko
EarthCube Architecture Input by CDF (90 min)
Summary overview of EC Architecture Bob Arko
Review of documents Tim Ahern
(NOTE THE FOLLOWING LOAD SLOWLY)
EarthCube Architecture Implementation Plan
EarthCube Solution Architecture
https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/EC-CDF999
CDF responses are due by January 17, 2017
DKAN is an open data portal built in Drupal. DKAN is designed to be feature-compatible with CKAN, the Open Data portal built by the Open Knowledge Foundation. With DKAN, you can:
Presentation by Andrew Hoppin, co-founder and president of NuCivic
Science data users studying specific events are often searching for multiple data sets or require many different types of data. The spatial and temporal definition of the event are used to gather data from multiple sources for an event virtual collection. Data are not limited to scientific data, but can include social media data such as videos, images, text messages and statistics of these alternate data. With this session, we aim to gather insights on using event-driven virtual collections to further community-based solutions, including event response planning, scientific research, and strengthening community resilience. This session will include discussion of virtual collection definition, data handling, and collection curation.
In this proposed session we encourage discussions to gain insights about how event-driven virtual collections can be used to further community-based needs and solutions, to include science research, event response, and other community needs. This information could be helpful for data centers and others to realize the value of collections of disparate data for events and other groupings.
Complete, consistent, and easy to understand information about data products is critical for meeting data discoverability, improved accessibility and usability, and interoperability requirements.
In the BigData and Open Data Era, with ever increasing variety and number of data products, it becomes increasingly impractical to do so in a manual fashion. The most effective way to ensure the completeness and quality of metadata and description documents of data products is to curate them in a systematic, consistent, and automatic fashion based on standards, community best practices, and defined frameworks.
Efforts to meeting this goal have been carried out in various disciplines and projects. This session invites presentations to describe and share their work/progress with the ESIP community on systems, tools, frameworks, workflows, etc. that enable repositories/data centers to systematically generate and provide descriptive information about the data products to data users for improved discoverability, transparency, usability, and interoperability. Additionally this session will discuss gaps that still need to be addressed.
Draft Agenda - 15 mins each (presentation + Q&A)
Integrative research frameworks that couple disciplinary-specific, diversely sourced datasets are key for addressing complex social-environmental issues such as human well-being, climate change, and sustainable development. Working in these complex systems often requires integrating data from a variety of both earth science and social science disciplines. Too often these interdisciplinary collaborations fail to account for the informatics challenges that face researchers attempting to combine their findings.
A major obstacle for social-environmental initiatives is integrating data that are produced by, managed by, and curated for different communities of users. This requires not only innovative methods of collaboration, but also technical infrastructures that enable data interoperability, provide consistent semantic encoding, ensure long-term access and preservation, and establish shared data governance and management protocols.
Many ESIP members understand that accounting for these types of activities is a critical component of successful long-term research cooperation. In this session we will identify key informatics challenges within social-environmental research and initiatives, and seek to draw on ESIP expertise in order to better understand how informatics aspects of social-environmental initiatives can be improved. Results from this session can help to develop a framework that incorporates informatics as a key element for achieving a truly systems and transdisciplinary perspective of social-environmental issues.
Goals of the session: (1) scope the S-E landscape: hear from people working on a variety of collaborative social-environmental systems initiatives (2) identify and synthesize key informatics challenges within S-E initiatives (3) develop or improve on a framework that incorporates informatics in S-E initiatives by drawing on ESIP knowledge and expertise (4) plan goals for S-E Informatics work after session, and situate ESIP within those goals (publication, workshops/testbed, ESIP future and collaboration with clusters, etc.)
Measuring the value of data products and services offers capabilities for stakeholders in the Earth, space, and social sciences to demonstrate how they are contributing to society. These stakeholders might include sponsors, mission operators, instrument and processing teams, and data distributors, such as digital repositories, scientific data centers, archives, and others. Unlike commercial entities, where return on investment (ROI) or profits may be used to measure value, contributions to the sciences are often conducted by non-profit organizations, including government, research, and educational institutions. Various methodologies can be utilized to demonstrate the value and document the benefits and impact of scientific data. Among other approaches, data distributors and other science stakeholders may measure impact by counts of data citations that appear in publications, users served, data products distributed, or mentions in the news or social media. Presentations in this session describe ways in which science stakeholders, including scientific data distributors, are measuring impact and assessing the value of data.
Speakers
Robert R. Downs, CIESIN, Columbia University. Measuring the Interdisciplinary Value of SEDAC Data.
Yusuke Kuwayama, Resources for the Future. Microeconomic Approaches for Quantifying the Value of Remotely Sensed Information
Robert Reining, The Mitre Corporation. Constructing NOAA's Value Tree: Representing Relationships between NOAA’s Organization, Services, and Observing Systems
Kyle Hundman, JPL, will discuss techniques for measuring online references to spacecraft missions.
Lawrence Friedl, NASA Applied Sciences Program, will share remarks to kick off the discussion.
Please find the agenda for the CDF General Assembly Meeting which will take place on 12-13 January 2017 in Bethesda, Maryland.
Part 2:
Usefulness of data interchange models. (30 min) Arlene Anderson
CDF member Activities in EarthCube (30) General Discussion
Further Discussion related to Architecture (15) CDF members
Other Business as needed (30 min)Over the past year, the NASA Science Mission Directorate (SMD) Earth Science Division (ESD) Earth Science Technology Office (ESTO) and Navteca have been exploring virtual reality (VR) technology as an approach to improving the understand of natural phenomena and physical processes. Initial demonstrations were made at the AGU conference last year and, working with Code 606, successive improvements to the functionality and depth have been made. Under an Advanced Information Systems Technology (AIST) contract, Navteca has developed a new VR demonstration of the three-dimensional structure of Hurricane Matthew cloud and storm systems from the Global Precipitation Model (GPM) which was demonstrated in the NASA booths at AGU Fall Meeting 2016 and at Supercomputing 2016.
The observer interacts with and views volumetric data in an innovative way as data is rendered in real time using interactive VR hardware (headset and controllers). The user has the ability to physically move through data that is traditionally displayed as layers or slices.
Results from displaying GPM data show that there is interesting potential for scientific visualization and analysis using VR. We will share these results at our demonstration of GPM data in virtual reality.
The OneStop Project: Usability Testing
In response to the President’s Open Government Initiative and related policies, NOAA has committed to providing improved public access to all of its environmental information to enable research and commercial innovation through ease of data discovery and use. The OneStop Project supports NOAA's efforts by leveraging existing access technologies and infusing specific innovations to provide improved discovery, access, and visualization services for NOAA’s data. OneStop is viewed as a pathfinder effort with an initial focus on selected high-priority datasets from NCEI, but eventually scalable across NOAA’s data. OneStop is a key implementation agent for the USGEO Common Framework for Earth Observation Data within NOAA.
In Dec 2016, the OneStop project is releasing a Beta version of its data discovery interface and invites the ESIP community to provide feedback in advance of the first full release later in the spring of 2017. Both script-based, human-observed testing and "freeform", on-your-own style testing with feedback provided via a form will be offered to the ESIP community and beyond during this beta review period.
Notes:OneStop Usability Testing
The OneStop project would like to host some form of usability testing of the OneStop user interface, which will have released its Beta for public review and testing just a few weeks before the meeting, in Dec 2016. Perhaps more effective than a breakout session, or at least coupled with a dedicated breakout session, would be a table/stand in tthe hallway that we would staff and conduct testing all week of the EDM/ESIP meetings. Please advise on how to proceed with something like this idea.
Thanks!
Ken
"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."
Communication is not always easy, particularly once jargon starts. In 2011, Somerville and Hassol(1) published a list of terms that have different meanings for scientists and the public. AGU has built on that initial list as well. These lists are a good start for scientists who want to better communicate with the public, but it is not complete. It also doesn’t address the challenges that scientists can have when speaking to other scientists outside of their specific discipline.
This session is meant to introduce the concept behind a “science communication thesaurus” building upon the work of Somerville and Hassol. We envision this thesaurus to have multiple parts addressing communication challenges around specific terms both between domains and between scientists and the public. We welcome anecdotes of successful and unsuccessful communications as we work to improve how we convey our research to others.
(1) Somerville, R.C.J., and Hassol, S.J., 2011. Communicating the science of climate change, Physics Today, 64(10), p. 48-53. doi:10.1063/PT.3.1296
Our life on Earth depends on a healthy balance of other types of life and whether we can use living and non-living resources in a sustainable manner into the future. One of the big challenges of our time is to characterize the diversity of life on Earth and measure how it is changing as this is a fundamental requirement to sustain our use of resources while the earth’s climate is changing at the same time. This requires not only updating the framework, architecture, and interoperability of national and international databases to include measures of the diversity of life around us but also making the analyses associated with those measures more transparent and computationally-enabled.
Analyses such as biodiversity indicators and better predictive capabilities are imperative for understanding and taking action to support biodiversity. These indicators and predictive capabilities need to be incorporated into products that decision makers can readily make use of. However it is not enough to simply make these predictions, we also need to unlock the black box around the workflows that are the basis for these indicators and predictions.
We invite biologists and those associated with curating and analyzing biological data to join us to present and discuss strategies for new products for decision makers that require biodiversity data in its broadest sense. We will explore in more detail connections between groups such as:
The Marine Biodiversity Observation Network (MBON) works to bring together legacy data while collecting new observational data to improve our understanding of changes and connections between marine biodiversity and ecosystem function.
The Marine Biodiversity Virtual Laboratory (MBVL) looks to address multi-scale, heterogeneous data challenges with informatics solutions that enable the cyber-generation and documentation of biodiversity indicators, providing the traceability between data and information to be used as a basis for sustainable ecosystem-based management and needed policy decisions.
The Ocean Biogeographic Information System-USA (OBIS-USA) integrates marine observation data from multiple data providers using the Darwin Core data standard and provides those data up to the international community through the International Ocean Biogeographic System and the Global Biodiversity Information Facility.
The Gulf of Mexico Coastal Ocean Observing System (GCOOS) has been working with the Integrated Ocean Observing System (IOOS) and OBIS-USA to standardize biological datasets for use in ERDDAP Servers and ingestion by OBIS-USA.
The objective is to identify areas of common interest and trace a path from observations to integrated data that can be incorporated into indicators and predictions within an open science framework to enable a revolution in science-based decision-making.
