2017 ESIP Winter Meeting

Whether you are currently leading an ESIP cluster or committee, or you are leading a project in your member organization, or you are simply interested in learning more about what leadership looks like in our field - this session is for you.  We’ll be speaking with a panel of Earth Science leaders who have diverse leadership styles, hearing their stories of how they grew into their current opportunities, the challenges they faced along the way and face now, and their thoughts on how to grow one’s own and team leadership capabilities.
 
We invite you to join in the discussion or just come to listen; we hope you will be encouraged in the skills you already have and inspired by the new ideas too!

We'll discuss how to promote the adoption of semantic technologies by other ESIP and non-ESIP groups. In particular, we will try to develop a plan for promoting use of the new ontology portal. Topics for discussion will include ideas for how to train others in using the portal; how to promote portal use; governance.

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 NSF-funded EarthCube program and ESIP have a strong interest in establishing a close partnership between the two organizations. For that main reason, EarthCube became a Type V member in summer 2016. There are significant opportunities to achieve mutual gain by leveraging the expertise of the respective communities, which already have a large overlap in membership, and through synergistic projects and other forms of collaboration.

The collaboration between ESIP and EarthCube will also be key to building consensus on technical standards and ensuring interoperability of distributed geoscience cyberinfrastructure. ESIP has achieved community governance and sustainability over the last nearly 20 years, making it the go-to place for cutting edge Earth and Space Science Informatics (ESSI) discussions and work. EarthCube and ESIP will accrue mutual benefits because it is one way to ensure that the EarthCube systems will align and contribute to work going on in the larger ESSI community, with the best case being the adoption of EarthCube tools by other ESIP partners.

There are a number of other potential areas of collaboration between EarthCube and ESIP, including in the area of testbed activity and assessment framework. ESIP has developed a well-formulated framework for evaluating the technology readiness level of information technologies, tools, and software. As EarthCube moves forward, a key component of the Roadmap implementation is the assessment of funded projects and development of an evaluation framework. EarthCube can leverage ESIP’s framework in evaluating the maturity and readiness level for integration into EarthCube’s cyberinfrastructure and exploit the synergies between the two similar activities.

In summary, we believe that by virtue of working together, ESIP and EarthCube will experience the network effect, enabling a more coordinated cyberinfrastructure across domain-specific communities and benefiting science in ways that we can only imagine. The purpose of this breakout session is to engaged in a focused discussion to establish a closer partnership between ESIP and EarthCube and to explore specific opportunities for collaboration.

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:

• Easily publish datasets in key machine readable formats including JSON, XML, RDF and more
• Share datasets through an API
• Manage the importing of large datasets

Presentation by Andrew Hoppin, co-founder and president of NuCivic

What do technology users or system architects look for when assessing new tools or system components?  Once they have a cursory understanding about what the new tool or system component can do, how do they calculate the chances of that tool or component meeting their needs or integrating into their existing or developing system?  What are the communication vehicles by which users and, subsequently, decision-makers  get the information they need?  How important is the user experience with the communication vehicles (e.g., project or tool website)?  What impact does the user experience with the communication vehicles have upon successful technology infusion?  For the technology developer and the architect, are there interoperability criteria that could be used during development that would facilitate the favorable assessment  of a technology?  At what point in development should communication about the tool / component be generated to increase the changes of technology infusion?In this session, we will investigate some of the factors affecting technology assessment and technology infusion and review, and suggest, approaches that can be used by both assessors and developers to increase the success rate for use of technologies into new environments.

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