IN31A-01 INVITED
Collaboration to develop Cyberinfrastructure for Hydrologic Sciences
For the past 3 years, Consortium for Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Science, Inc (CUAHSI) has
been collaborating with several research universities, and San Diego Supercomputer Center as the technology
partner, on developing a cyberinfrastructure for the Hydrologic Sciences, or Hydrologic Information System (HIS).
The CUAHSI HIS team has been researching, prototyping, and implementing web services for discovering and
accessing a variety of hydrologic data sources, and developing applications for the desktop and for the Web.
Several products have been developed: a uniform set of web services for hydrologic data retrieval (WaterOneFlow
web services); an information model and database schema for storing hydrologic observations, called the
observations data model (ODM); instructions and/or extensions to common desktop applications such as
Microsoft Excel and MATLAB for accessing distributed hydrologic data. In collaboration with ESRI, we have
developed a Hydrologic Data Access System, a web-accessible map interface to WaterOneFlow web services.
The web services have been demonstrated to work within the a modeling framework such as the Open Modeling
Interface (OpenMI), as well as within several programming environments, in both Java and .NET. This experience
highlighted important compatibility and interoperability issues surrounding the use of web services across
languages, computing platforms, and web service toolkits.
An important outcome of HIS research and development is the abstract specification of the WaterOneFlow web
services. Using this definition, we can present different internet accessible data repositories (USGS NWIS, EPA
STORET, DAYMET, NCDC ASOS, etc), as well as local databases following the ODM shema, in a uniform way.
This approach simplifies programmatic retrieval and integration of hydrologic data.
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Presently, we are focusing on combining the developed tools into a distributable HIS software package which will
be implemented at 11 hydrologic observatory testbeds as part of an NSF WATERS initiative. This will let us test
the HIS tools on diverse hydrologic datasets collected by the testbeds and help further develop the
Cyberinfrastructure for Hydrologic Sciences.
http:www.cuahsi.org/his/
IN31A-02 INVITED
Data and Information in the International Year of Planet Earth (2007-2009)
After its inception in 2001, the International Year of Planet Earth was proclaimed for 2008 by the UN General Assembly in December 2005. The UN Year is in the core of a triennium that started in January 2007 and will be closing by the end of 2009. Through UN proclamation, it has gained the political support by 191 UN nations. The International Year of Planet Earth (IYPE) was initiated by the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS) and UNESCO and was actively supported by all Earth science Unions in ICSU and by almost all major Earth Scientific bodies in the world. In this presentation special emphasis will be given to the OneGeology/Transparent Earth project, whose goal is to deliver interoperable digital geological map data for the world at a target scale of 1:1 M. The OneGeology project is an initiative being undertaken by more than 50 Geological Surveys (the numbers continue to grow weekly) and is being backed by six global geoscience bodies (ICOGS, IUGS, IYPE, CGMW, UNESCO and ISCGM). The project will be inclusive and is ensuring all countries may participate - thus depending on their capability and capacity nations will provide access to the geological map data they hold in different ways. For some coverage will at first be raster images; others with more developed systems will dynamically 'serve' geological map data for their territories as a WMS, WFS. For the more sophisticated attributed vector data the project will work in tandem with the IUGS Commission for the Management and Application of Geoscience Information (CGI) and use the global geoscience data model and exchange language (GeoSciML) which a CGI Working Group has been developing. The partnership is a powerful one: in effect the OneGeology Project is providing the wheels and GeoSciML the engine for the roll-out and take-up of a global geoscience standard through the vehicle of a geological map - something all geologists understand. But the OneGeology project has other goals too - by embracing all nations regardless of their state of development in digital geoscience, it will shorten the digital learning curve for many and will see the transfer of essential and much-needed know-how. Moreover it will capture (and indeed already has captured) the imaginations of many inside and outside geoscience and will see the profile of our science raised in exactly the way that IYPE hoped and planned would happen.
IN31A-03 INVITED
Integrated Access to Heliospheric and Magnetospheric Data
Heliospheric and magnetospheric data are provided by a variety of diverse
sources. For space physics scientists, knowing that such data sources exist
and where they are located are only the first hurdles to overcome before they
can utilize the data for research. As a solution, the NASA Heliophysics
Division has established a group of virtual observatories (VOs) to provide the
scientific community with integrated access to well documented data and
related services. The VOs are organized by scientific discipline and yet their
essential characteristic is cross-discipline data discovery and exchange.
In this talk, we will demonstrate the architecture and features
of two distributed data systems, the Virtual Heliospheric Observatory (VHO)
and the Virtual Magnetospheric Observatory at NASA Goddard Space Flight
Center (VMO/G). The VHO and VMO/G are designed to share most of the components
to facilitate faster development and to ease communication between the two
VxOs. Since different communities are served by the two observatories,
slightly, and sometimes even significantly, different terms and
expectations must be accommodated and correctly processed. In our approach
the interfaces are tuned for a particular community while the standard
SPASE data model is employed internally. Together with other VxOs, we are
also developing a standard query language for metadata exchange among the
VxOs, data providers, and VxO-related services. Specific examples will be
given.
http:vmo.nasa.gov
http:vho.nasa.gov
IN31A-04
Data Search in the Virtual ITM Observatory
One of the principal advantages provided by Virtual Observatories is searching for data from multiple sources
simultaneously. This is important for much of the interdisciplinary sciences where one is looking for multiple
sources of data to study a given phenomena. The search is greatly enhanced when the results of a search
across one database are used to constrain or limit the conditions for another search. An example of this type of
search is to find data from a particular satellite during geophysical storms. The Virtual ITM Observatory (VITMO), to
be made operational at the end of 2007, was developed to support these types of constrained searches. We will
demonstrate examples of how VITMO will develop and use these and other types of constrained searches.
http:vitmo.jhuapl.edu
IN31A-05
Emerging Systems of Systems for Environmental Data
The scientific research community increasingly has complex, difficult questions to ask of its observations and model results - questions that will increasingly span disparate datasets, multiple disciplines, and international boundaries. Our future information systems are going to need to satisfy these growing demands. GEOSS, the Global Earth Observing System of Systems, puts forth a compelling vision in this area. Solid steps in the direction of this vision are already well underway, moving us towards the next generation of global, federated environmental data systems. For example, last year the World Meteorological Organization demonstrated its first prototype for WIS, the WMO Information System. WIS is a step in the direction of GEOSS, providing a federated system that provides aggregation of environmental data and services at national and regional levels, combined with a small number of redundant peer systems that can service large-scale geographical regions. Forming a foundational layer for efforts like WIS, the global community is in the process of building other systems of systems that essentially aggregate and integrate the output of data and modeling efforts, in areas such as weather, climate, space physics, and many others. This encouraging trend towards federation of new and existing systems is driven by scientific needs and underpinned by shared technology, interfaces, protocols, metadata standards, and the world of Grid computing. NCAR, working with many partners, is contributing to a number of projects that are focused upon some of these challenges. In this presentation we will describe a suite of complimentary and interconnected efforts, including the Earth System Grid (climate), the Community Data Portal (and WIS connections), TIGGE (weather), the Virtual Solar Terrestrial Observatory, and related metadata thrusts. The main emphasis here is the pursuit of systems of systems as well as progress towards semantic integration, which will be very important if we are to pursue our long-term scientific goals.
IN31A-06
A Candidate Cyberinfrastructure for the NSF Ocean Observatories Initiative
We will describe a candidate cyberinfrastructure for the NSF Major Research Equipment and Facilities Construction project termed the Ocean Observatories Initiative. The system architecture departs substantially from earlier models in dealing with real-time data streams (not files), real-time workflow quality assurance and modeling/analysis, and the use of the knowledge developed in controlling the attached, real-time sensor network. The middleware, which facilitates these interactions, also provides the capability to support many separate virtual observatories developed to meet individual scientist's needs. This transformative approach to scientific interaction with the ocean environment marks the beginning of a new epoch of the instrumented or digital Earth with a globally accessible continuous signal representing the now state of the Earth system. The data and inferred knowledge informs our understanding of the past, present, and predicted future of Earth systems as the observed signal grows exponentially for the foreseeable future.
IN31A-07
The NOAA National Operational Model Archive and Distribution System (NOMADS)
To address a growing need for retrospective Global Climate Model (GCM) and NWP input and output data, the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) along with the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) and the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL) initiated the highly collaborative NOAA National Operational Model Archive and Distribution System (NOMADS). NOMADS (http:nomads.ncdc.noaa.gov) provides real-time and retrospective access to model and observational data by a wide variety of users using the Internet. The NOMADS system is one of the first operational systems of its kind and filled a gap in the geosciences community for retrospective model data access. Low bandwidth users will discover the NOMADS sub-setting capability for high volume datasets particularly useful. NOMADS provides model input and output data and products and other associated data and is an inter-operable network architecture with fully integrated data access and manipulation tools using a distributed, Web-services based format independent methodology. NOMADS allows temporal, spatial, and variable sub-setting to address the ever increasing spatial resolution of models and therefore volume and varied formats of data presented for archive and access at NCDC. This paper will describe the benefits of using NOMADS, and its most recent advances including a new Ensemble probabilities interface, the Live Access Server implementation across two NOAA Line Offices (NESDIS and NMFS); the model forecast aggregation capability being developed at Unidata and now installed on the NCDC NOMADS THREDDS Data Server; and other new services and products available on the NOMADS server at NCDC. Finally, this paper will describe the new operational National Weather Service (NWS) NOMADS capability currently being developed for deployment across the U.S.