IN21C-01 INVITED
Beware of Geeks Bearing Gifts - Are we Meeting the Requirements of our User Communities?
The 20th century brought about an "information revolution" that has forever altered the way we work, communicate, and live. The way science has been conducted for the past 200 years has been challenged by new media of communication and for the dissemination of data. We now have the tools at hand, commonly called cyberinfrastructure, that enable new forms of global collaboration. But are we fully realising the potential of cyberinfrastructure? Has it become an integral part of our scientific culture? Tools developed in Earth and Space Science Informatics projects suffer the same effects like informatics developments in other fields. Many of the projects fail to meet user requirements, and they do so for a number of reasons. Besides a certain reluctance on the side of scientists to adopt new tools for conducting their research, many cyberinfrastructure projects suffer from "marketing myopia" (Levitt, 1960) in the way they try to "sell" their applications. According to Levitt, the difference between selling and marketing is that the former fulfils the needs of the seller and the latter the needs of the buyer. Cyberinfrastructure projects must stop trying to sell their achievements to the scientific community, and instead market them by considering the scientists" needs right at the beginning of their endeavours. Admittedly, the requirements of scientific user communities are "moving targets", because scientific workflows are often subject to ad-hoc changes, depending on the outcome of the preceding step. Another important risk factor, faced by many cyberinfrastructure projects, is that the designated user community is not aware of the availability of this new resource. This is where training and outreach are essential, especially to draw in early adopters of new technology and multipliers among researchers. Only cyberinfrastructure tools that truly serve their designated user community will eventually become part of the scientific infrastructure. This presentation looks at the factors and strategies that affect adoption of cyberinfrastructrures by the scientific community.
IN21C-02 INVITED
Building a Global Data Network for Studies of Earth Processes at the World's Plate Boundaries
The international geoscience community is engaged in scientifically aligned goals to understand the fundamental processes of crustal formation, modification and destruction at the Earth's plate boundaries through broad multi- disciplinary initiatives such as the InterRidge and InterMARGINS programs. These programs involve the collection of unique data sets during oceanic and terrestrial expeditions and subsequent laboratory work conducted by research institutions around the globe. These international research efforts would benefit significantly if data collections maintained as national efforts could be better linked and broader access were initiated. At present there are no formal agreements within these programs for data sharing between foreign partners. A workshop was convened in May 2007, jointly sponsored and funded by MARGINS, InterMARGINS, InterRidge, Ridge2000, the US National Science Foundation, and the German project "The Future Ocean", to explore current opportunities and challenges for international data exchange to support marine geoscience research broadly. Participants from 14 countries discussed technological, organizational, and cultural issues for building a global data network and agreed on a set of recommendations regarding science user needs, data documentation, data publication, metadata interoperability, and opportunities and obstacles for international data sharing. They underscored that (1) open public access to data is fundamental to verifiable scientific progress; (2) uniform best practices and standards for data acquisition, data submission to data centers, and data publication need to be developed and used routinely within the international community, facilitated by tools that automate metadata acquisition in the field and in the lab; (3) the proliferation of metadata standards needs to be minimized to achieve a uniform approach for scientific metadata building upon the work of existing community-based projects; (4) data centers should expose their data resources via web services to enable data access through programmatic interfaces and expand options for data analysis and visualization; (5) international programs and bodies such as GEOSS, eGY, and ICSU should be leveraged to promote an initiative for a global data network; (6) a dedicated task group is needed to advance the implementation of a global data network along with special interest groups to share experience and solutions on issues concerning metadata and interfaces. Several immediate next steps were identified to initiate the implementation of these recommendations.
IN21C-03
iGEON-India: International GEON Activities in India
As part of its international activities, the Geosciences Network project (GEON, http://www.geongrid.org) has initiated collaborations with the University of Hyderabad, India. This effort called, iGEON-India, is funded by the Indo-US Science and Technology Forum. The goal of the project is to promote the use of cyberinfrastructure at participating institutions in India to facilitate the sharing of geosciences data via GEON. The lead institution in India, which is the University of Hyderabad, has deployed a GEON portal at their site in Hyderabad to enable local scientists to register their data sets. The iGEON-India grid is a distributed grid composed of dedicated hardware resources physically located at partner sites spread across India. Currently, this includes the University of Hyderabad, University of Pune, and a newly established university in a rural area in southern India, in Rajamundry. Each partner site hosts a minimum of one PoP (Point of Presence) node, which is a server-class machine: a dual-processor Linux-based server that runs the standard GEON Software Stack. Some sites may have additional hardware resources while other sites have additional resources that are accessible to GEON users, but not dedicated to GEON. The iGEON PoP node provides capabilities to (i) develop and deploy services and serve datasets for the users at their site and for the broader iGEON community, (ii) help the partner site integrate local department or campus resources, and (iii) provide resources for system-level components, e.g. for data caching, monitoring, etc. Users at the University of Hyderabad have already started registering some data sets, including GIS data and geochemistry data. In addition, some GIS services have been registered, and other services related to image processing are in the process of being developed. As part of the collaboration, the GEON project has already conducted two cyberinfrastructure workshops at the University of Hyderabad in October 2005 and August 2007. iGEON-India is a collaboration between GEON in the US (represented by the San Diego Supercomputer Center, University of Oklahoma, and Penn State University) and the University of Hyderabad, University of Pune, and the University of Jammu in India.
IN21C-04
Spatial Prescreening Techniques for Earth Observation Data: Bounding Box vs G- Polygon
We compare the two methods widely used in defining geographical regions in satellite Earth observation data -- Bounding box and G-polygon. While G-polygon method is more acurate than bounding box, it is mathematically more complicated. We introduce a efficient and easy-to-use algorithm to define G-polygon regions. It is capable of handling most Terra and Aqua satellite data granules regardless of their locations on the Earth, with no special treatment required for dateline and pole crossing regions. It is easily adaptable to other problems where spatial prescreening and subsetting is desired.
IN21C-05
Geoscience Information Network
Geological surveys in the USA have an estimated 2,000–3,000 databases that represent one of the largest, long- term information resources on the geology of the United States and collectively constitute a national geoscience data "backbone" for research and applications. An NSF-supported workshop in February, 2007, among representatives of the Association of American State Geologists (AASG) and the USGS, recommended that "the nation's geological surveys develop a national geoscience information framework that is distributed, interoperable, uses open source standards and common protocols, respects and acknowledges data ownership, fosters communities of practice to grow, and develops new web services and clients." The AASG and USGS have formally endorsed the workshop recommendations and formed a joint Steering Committee to pursue design and implementation of the Geoscience Information Network (GIN). GIN is taking a modular approach in assembling the network: 1. Agreement on open-source standards and common protocols through the use of Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) standards. 2. A data exchange model utilizing the geoscience mark-up language GeoSciML, an OGC GML-based application. 3. A prototype data discovery tool (National Digital Catalogue – NDC) developing under the National Geological and Geophysical Data Preservation Program run by the USGS. 4. Data integration tools developed or planned by a number of independent projects. A broader NSF-sponsored workshop in March 2007 examined what direction the geoinformatics community in the US should take towards developing a National Geoinformatics System. The final report stated that, "It was clear that developing such a system should involve a partnership between academia, government, and industry that should be closely connected to the efforts of the U. S. Geological Survey and the state geological surveys…" The GIN is collaborating with 1-G Europe, a coalition of 27 European geological surveys in the OneGeology initiative that is designing a continental network comparable to GIN. GIN members are also heavily involved in the IUGS-CGI Interoperability Working Group, and the NDC project, further ensuring the network will have broad involvement, be globally connected, and be readily accessible.
IN21C-06
Software design for sequential/hybrid time integration in the Community Climate System Model
All current releases of the Community Climate System Model (CCSM) have employed a concurrent integration scheme where the four main components, the atmosphere, ocean, land and sea ice models, are scheduled to execute concurrently on separate sets of processors. Although in theory this can make more efficient use of large numbers of processors, in practice data serialization between the models leads to idle processors and finding an optimum load balance between models and processors is not straightforward. For the next release of CCSM, we are developing a version that executes each model in sequence while decomposing the space domain over the same number of processors. The advantages of this system include no idle time, more efficient use of small numbers of processors and removal of the load-balancing problem. It should also be more straightforward to add new components to the system. We have employed the same coupling software, the Model Coupling Toolkit, as used in the current CCSM to build the prototype sequential system. The sequential CCSM will support all of the features of the released CCSM including the ability to couple data or full models and coupling the ocean at different frequencies. We are also developing a hybrid integration scheme where the ocean model executes concurrently with a sequential atmosphere, land and sea ice system. This two- component system will be much easier to load balance and can provide the best combination of performance and efficiency on large processor counts.
IN21C-07
An auroral VxO: A reappraisal of need and call for community input
Space-based auroral imagery provides our best way of specifying the global deposition of energy in the coupled ionosphere-thermosphere via precipitation, as well as the global state of the magnetosphere. These images complement global data products built from networks of ground-based radars, all-sky imagers, magnetometers, riometers, etc. There is thus a perceived need to develop ways to intercompare and integrate data from different imagers, and to compare image data with other data products. Virtual observatories (VxO's) provide an opportunity to share data and to provide a framework for intercomparison of auroral image data with other data sources. The author, working with international collaborators, has previously proposed to build on existing collaborations with online data providers to develop a virtual observatory for space-based auroral image data that will work with, and complement, existing VxO efforts. The proposed efforts would allow researchers and other virtual observatories to survey and access data from all space-based auroral imagers, to integrate data from different imagers with each other, and to set the technical stage for ultimate integration with other global data products (such as SuperDARN, SuperMag, VGMO, Gloria, etc). The proposed work would also complement other online efforts, such as the efforts of the Canadian Space Sciences Data Portal (CSSDP), SuperDARN, and the evolving network of NASA supported virtual observatories. While the auroral VxO concept has been well-received, previous efforts to make that concept a reality have faced questions about the degree to which an auroral VxO is needed and the degree to which the auroral imaging community is willing to participate in such an observatory. This paper presents the expected advantages of an auroral VxO, discusses potential tools and architectures needed in such an observatory, and outlines the level of community involvement needed to make it a reality. The paper is intended to open discussion on this topic and initiate a broad-based community effort in support of a future auroral VxO effort.