Air Quality Meeting during GEO-VI Plenary

From Earth Science Information Partners (ESIP)

The air quality field has been a leader in the effort to create GEOSS, the Global Earth Observation System of Systems. A large, diverse group of projects are underway which strive to support air quality management decision with observations from ambient monitors and satellites and model results. The air quality community has also been quite active in building and implementing the GEOSS Common Infrastructure (GCI) and making the GCI useful for practitioners.

GEO has recognized and publicized some of this work in several GEO Work Plan Tasks. GEO, USEPA, and the ESIP Federation are also seeking to activate a GEO Air Quality Community of Practice. During the GEO-VI Plenary in Washington, DC, 17 – 18 November 2009, USEPA and partners will convene a meeting to discuss this work, improve communication between projects, and discuss how these projects can contribute to GEOSS.

We'll also work on clearly conveying to data providers how they can make GEOSS work well with their AQ data.

Please feel free to comment on the goals and agenda, or make suggestions directly by editing these pages. Comments can be directed to David McCabe at EPA.

Preliminary Agenda

Draft Agenda

Goals for presentations

1. Bring together representatives of a number of the air quality projects underway which are contributing to GEOSS, enabling communication between projects. Inform the broader community of AQ practitioners interested in GEOSS about these projects.

  • What information do they deliver?
  • How can they be more useful for decision support if GEOSS is successfully implemented?
  • Respond to outline of GEOSS (previewed on-line) (?)

2. Present aspects of the emerging GEOSS. We’ll briefly present an overarching vision of how an interoperable, service-oriented approach to finding, manipulating, visualizing, and disseminating data will serve AQ management.

Then present the work developed to design and implement the GEOSS Common Infrastructure (GCI) and the Air Quality Community Infrastructure, developed by members of the community during the GEO Architecture Implementation Pilot. These presentations, together with the discussion in the afternoon, should clearly define how providers can most effectively contribute to GEOSS (best practices, etc.)

It will be a challenge to do all of this in a short time, but squeezing both of these topics into a morning reflects the tension we face between working on near-term deliverable applications to provide decision support and long-term infrastructure development.

Goals for discussion

  • Discuss whether the infrastructure described (goals, approach, implementation) is what we think is needed.
  • Define best practices for contributions to GEOSS. Many datasets (including AQ data) are currently registered in ways that do not allow the infrastructure to use that data in a full way.
  • Activate / Formalize the Air Quality Community of Practice. What this means is up to us, but some important factors:
    • Visibility: web page, links from GEO
    • Clear mission, goals, near term plans
    • Does the CoP want to say anything about the GEO Work Plan?

Logistics

The meeting will be held in the Ronald Reagan Building in downtown Washington DC. You will need your passport, a (US) State-issued drivers license, or a US Government ID to enter the building (and you will have to go through metal detectors if you do not have a US government ID). The meeting will be open to the public, but please contact David McCabe (McCabe dot David at epa dot gov) if you are planning to attend. See the GEO Plenary page for information about lodging, etc.

The GEO Plenary exhibits will also be open to the public, in the Reagan Building. USGEO / Agencies (NOAA, EPA, NASA...) will exhibit there, as will agencies from overseas, ESIP, and other international organizations.

The GEO Plenary itself, which is on November 17 - 18, is only open to official delegates from member nations, recognized or observer international organizations, etc.

Links