2017 ESIP Winter Meeting

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!

 

Marine Biodiversity Observation Networks (MBONs) will produce measurements of organism occurrences, abundance and density from various ongoing local collections, and from new technologies such as genome sequencing and imagery. From these will be produced complex derived measurements and multiple diversity indices for broad taxonomic groups (“microbes-to-megafauna”). Data must be interoperable with existing environmental measurements and also aligned with Darwin Core and GBIF.  Considerable work has gone into lists of biological terms, e.g., the Essential Biological Variables, the IOOS Biological Core Variables and as part of the GOOS Essential Ocean Variables. However, some aspects of these vocabularies are still at the conceptual level - i.e., they are somewhat ambiguous and without quantities assigned. Concrete descriptions of measurements for population data are needed in all communities studying populations and biodiversity, so additional work on these terms will have broad applicability. Alignment between Darwin Core terms (via OBIS) and some MBON datasets from GCOOS has already begun, which lends urgency to this work.

During this session, we will outline the steps necessary to operationalize important population variables so that they can be attached to measurements in MBON datasets. We anticipate tasks such as specifying definitions or constraints for established variables, and  aligning definitions among various vocabularies. A sample of current tools and capabilities will be briefly outlined, and input from participants’ priorities gathered so that a concrete scope of work can be developed to advance this work.

Background Material:

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/

Google Doc For Session: http://goo.gl/7euaih

Discovery of data related to a place or topic often requires traversal of physical or semantic links that connect the data of interest to the place or topic being studied. This session seeks applications (successful or not) that address this basic concept. A series of presentations describing the systems will be followed by a discussion of their strengths and weaknesses in order to inform future activities in this space.

    Establishing and maintaining indexes of links between domain features (such as waterbodies, ecosystems and cities) that are relevant to decisions and data related to those features is a challenge we all face. There are numerous approaches that could be considered for exposing, discovering, and establishing links between environmental, hydrologic, and related features. Systems in this space tend to have components like a search engine—crawlers that index data sources, an index that can form relationships between indexed data according to relevant queries, and search services that expose indexed information in interesting ways. In the hydrology domain, this would be implemented as a search service that can traverse the river network, where other domains would have their own relevant spatial or other type of index. Recent work to standardize features in the hydrology domain has resulted in HY_Features for surface water, GWML2 for groundwater, and SoilML for soils. The Observations and Measurements standard and others that follow the same pattern of “observing" and “observed" features provides a standardized model to follow but the landscape of systems implemented to leverage this pattern is varied.

    In this session, speakers are invited to present proven methodologies for solving one or more aspects of the problem of linking domain features to each other and to observations such that users can ask questions rooted in their domain. Of special interest are methods and technologies that allow 1) a domain-specific crawler to discover information automatically, 2) an index of related features to be used in domain-relevant queries, and 3) search service APIs and data services that expose search results and data products. The session will take the form of a series of short presentations followed by a facilitated discussion. The outcomes of this session will help inform a planned OGC interoperability experiment working toward formal best practices for such systems.

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.

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.)

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.

From 3D gaming, to manufacturing, to education and beyond, Virtual Reality (VR) promises to revolutionize the way we experience the digital world. This session brings together technologists and scientists and engineers that are interested in exploring how VR and Augmented Reality (AR) can be leveraged to advance future mission planning and scientific research. We invite presentations and demonstrations that showcase innovative work in VR/AR. We will discuss and explore how these cuttingedge technologies can benefit Earth and Planetary science.