Energy and Climate Cluster Summer Meeting Agenda

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Revision as of 20:13, July 26, 2011 by Yasmin Zaerpoor (Yzaerpoor) (talk | contribs) (added July 15 notes)

Energy and Climate

July 13, 2011 Wednesday

8:15 – 9:45 AM Track 5 Energy-Climate Breakout

  • GEOSS Architecture Implementation Pilot (AIP-3) Energy Scenario: Use case of the environmental impact assessment of the production, transportation and use of energy for the photovoltaic (PV) sector – Lionel Menard, École des Mines de Paris (via WebEx)
  • Wind Energy Resource Assessment – Daran Rife, NCAR
  • Application of Statistical Correlations of Sub-Hourly Irradiance Measurements and Hourly SUNY Data to Photovoltaic Array Performance – Marissa R. Hummon, National Renewable Energy Laboratory

9:45 – 10:00 AM Break

10:00 AM – 12:00 PM Track 5 Energy-Climate Breakout (Cont’d)

  • Partnerships for Wind Energy Siting Decision Tools – Alison LaBonte, OSTP, and Taber Allison, AWWI (via WebEx)
  • NREL Data Sources and Quality – Debbie Brodt-Giles, National Renewable Energy Laboratory (via WebEx)
  • The New Peer-To-Peer Architecture of the Earth System Grid Federation – Luca Cinquini, NASA/JPL
  • Impact of Climate Change on Energy Demand and the Optimal Site Selection of Wind and Solar Farms - Glenn Higgins et al, Northrop Grumman

July 15, 2011 Friday

8:30 – 10:00 AM Track 5 Energy-Climate Breakout






July 15, 2011 Minutes

Online Dynamic (Wiki) Wind (Power)-Wildlife-Habitat Decision Tools: Catalogue and Community of Practice Meeting Minutes

Attended: Shailendra Kumar (Northrop Grumman), Yasmin Zaerpoor (ESIP Student Fellow), Karl Benedict (UNM/EDAC), Tamara Ledley (TERC), Chuck Hutchinson (Univ of AZ), Uma Shankar (UNC- Chapel Hill), Brian Wee (NEON, Inc), Jerry Pan (ORNL), Bill Teng (NASA GES DISC), Mark McCaffry (CIRES-CU Boulder)

WebEx attendance- John Anderson, Rahul, Ramachandran, Douglas Johnson, Alison LaBonte

  • Kumar: Alison LaBonte and Taber Allison identified the need for responsible deployment of wind power during their talk on Wednesday (July 13th, see agenda) and that site selection is a key issue (i.e. choosing a site that has minimal impacts on the surrounding environment). Key issue is how you make sure key information is available to decision makers to choose the site. Alison and Taber identified the decision tools available that could help in making sure that the wind power is installed in a way that has minimal impact.
  • Alison: There are tools out there but there is difficulty in choosing which tools to use. Idea she had was to try to add a platform that would make tools (and the data behind them) more transparent. A gap study of decision making tools would also be very helpful.
  • Kumar: Given those leads, we thought we would discuss a potential project. Some of the ideas we have so far:

Slide: An online Dynamic (Wiki/Drupal) Wind (Power)-Wildlife-Habitat Decision Tools Catalogue and community of practice to

    • Build transparency of the decision tool architecture, data and functionality;
    • Aid decision makers in tool selection and use appropriate to their planning tools;
    • Focus improvements to the kit of decision tools where needed;
    • Facilitate partnerships in tool development and application;

Slide: Tool developers and users need to

    • Engage in defining/refining the proposed architecture
    • Develop a classification of the type of function that the tools can perform
    • Populate the catalogue
  • Tamara: Who are these tools for? For professionals or a broader community? Would students be able to contribute to this effort?
  • Kumar: Both- developers need it to make site selection, but there are planners and other stakeholders that need access to these tools. Yes, this would be an opportunity for universities to be able to contribute and provide the tools that they are developing.

It will include developers, users, and educational/research community.

  • Question 2: These stakeholders and end-users, are they already involved or are they people that you still need to contact?
  • Kumar: We will need to contact them.
  • Karl: So when we’re talking about users, what are we thinking about in terms of the different types of users that are part of the stakeholder community?
  • Alison: Primarily developers, but any stakeholder group that is developing a tool for decision making (non-profit groups, government, developers themselves). Anyone that is developing a tool would be interested in what else is out there- may give them perspective on why other tools are being heavily used, how they can update their tools and make them more valuable.
  • Mark (Univ of Colorado) Comment from audience: We’ve been doing user needs assessments to see if the tools from NASA and NOAA provide are meeting the needs. My comment is that it would make sense to have a needs assessment to get a sense of what the community’s needs are, what they’re using and what the gaps might be. You will also be able to tap their expertise along the way and, as things develop, bounce the beta version off them.
  • Kumar: I completely agree. Just to clarify-t he tool is a catalogue of tools that various people are developing. What are the gaps and the user needs that are not being identified by the current tools?
  • Brian: We shouldn’t limit the tool to just capturing the catalogue of tools or best practices. I think the last thing we want to add is just a ‘list of stuff’. What you really need is a more social sharing platform where the list of tools and best practices are there but there is also a means to see what other people are doing actively and people are engaged actively. You need a tool where you can see that they are actively using. If they download a tool, you want the facility infrastructure that you’re developing to tell other users that ‘someone is interested in this tool’... it needs to be dynamic so that the list doesn’t just die.

Slide: Wiki Information for Each Decision Tool

    • A matrix of decision tool functions and features
    • Listing of base data layers, their source, and follow on adjustments to the data layer that are component to the decision tool
    • Tracking of updates to decision tools
    • Keeping a tally of applications of each decision tool
    • Contact info for decision tools
  • Brian: I would add that it’s important that there is additional functionality that needs to be highlighted. What draws me to Facebook to check is to see what other people are doing. So that layer of social connectivity is important to this tool that we want to propose.
  • Kumar: I agree- the collaborative platform is important here.
  • Rahul: Who will this be open to? How do you ensure data quality?
  • Karl: One approach is to add mediators- that would add an intermediate step to adding data (i.e. like what Wikipedia does)
  • Rahul: If you restrict the users you have more control over the data quality.

Slide: An Example (Ecosystem-based Management Tools Network)

    • Gives you a list of tools, you click on them and the it takes you to the website. But this is pretty rudimentary- we need to go beyond this.

Slide: Tool Function Matrix:

    • On one side you have the tools listed at the top and then the criteria on the side to show which tool addresses which needs.
    • These are some ideas on how to present the information to end-users.

Slide: Community of Practice

    • Should include metadata, use cases, collaborative environment, mapping tools to user applications, connecting tools to datasets, how to better utilize the tool, gap analysis
  • Tamara: It may be useful to think about the mechanism by which, instead of the matrix, you have a faceted way of searching. When you click on each feature, it narrows the tools that fall under that category.
  • Mark: Instead, or in addition, to the matrix, it would be helpful to be able to sort through and find the tool. The added value of having feedback from peers, some sort of review about the tools, is important. Not just a laundry list of tools- but a community building aspect of how people use the tools, change the tools, etc.
  • Kumar: ESG is providing metadata to various places- but also going a step further to add information on how the tools are valuable and what they’re using it for. That’s a useful model to look to.

Slide: Use of the Wiki Information

    • This would be a place where we can start getting feedback from the end-user community.
    • Can also have peer reviews to evaluate the quality of the pool and for the end-users to see which tools are well-supported.
    • To identify areas for possible tool interoperability: that’s a big one. So that tool-users can better understand how a combination of tools can help them in their task.
    • Support activities to evaluate and further refine tools: e.g. there’s a workshop (AWWI-Western Governors’ Association Landscape Assessment Tool workshop) coming up that will be an opportunity to engage the communities.

Brian: Some of these areas, especially the parts about liking inputs/outputs, really bring up Chris Lynnes’s (NASA GSFC) proposal about earth science collaboration. Given that that is 4-5 years away just to pull the pieces together- Chris Lynnes uses ‘work flow’; his vision is to build a cloud-based collaborative platform. In this particular talk, you are injecting a good element which is not found in Chris Lynnes’s vision like ‘best practices’.

  • Kumar: We’re not going to do all these things right away... it will be a building process. Rahul, do you think it would be appropriate to use Drupal or stick to wiki?
  • Rahul: Drupal has much more expanded ability as a platform.
  • Karl: The ability to have much more structured content is easier in Drupal. Given the level of expertise in the Federation, Drupal would be more appropriate. An example is done in the wiki: the Information Technology interoperability developed a matrix of interoperability standards and tools and support for those. Essentially it was a table within the wiki. Another example was a product of a workshop- may already be using Drupal.
  • Brian: I would agree- Drupal has more flexibility, it is an open-source platform and easy to use.
  • Tamara: One other member of ESIP F is SERP- another content-management system. It speaks to the things that you’re doing.

Slide: Sample Listing of Wind-Wildlife Habitat Tools for the Catalogue

    • This is a list of tools that already exist and can be catalogued.
  • Alison: Most of these tools are under development. Only the last two are actually in existence. There are multiple other tools that aren’t on this list, but these are the major ones under development.
  • Tamara: Went to CLEAN homepage (cleanet.org) These are Educational Resources: we have 92 resources in here now. If you go down on the right hand side, we have various ways that we can categorize the tools. In our particular case, we have Climate and Energy topics at different levels. For each facet (regionally focused, type of tool you want to use, etc) that you want to refine it, it narrows down your list. Each tool page has a link to the tool, description of it, notes from the reviewers, etc. Through our review process, we’ve added more information about the science, the pedagogy, the technical issues that have come up while using the tool, etc. At the bottom, there is a link to ‘join the discussion’. What it doesn’t do, which this doesn’t have, is that you would also want to have discussion about a group of tools. All of this is information that you could add to your proposal.
  • Kumar: We could have discussion groups on topics or a need rather than specific tools.
  • Alison: There are only about a dozen tools out there... there aren’t that many. There is a question of ‘how much architecture we should be designing if there are only a number of tools out there’. It gets more complicated when you are considering the datasets that go into these tools.
  • Tamara: I also worked on a project called ‘AccessData’ which was trying to facilitate way to identify datasets that could be used in education. We have information about the dataset in human-readable form for the educator: i.e. what was collected, how, what use it is to the user, what it’s teaching. So here is architecture that you can take advantage of- you can develop this around tools that address a whole range of topics (not only wind... maybe also solar).
  • Rahul: Drupal could do something similar.
  • Tamara: The CMS was built by Sean Fox at SERC (part of the ESIP federation). It’s a tool design that we developed that easily engages users.
  • Kumar: The next steps are to come to an agreement- does this project make sense for us to take on? We’ll certainly need member participation in this. Is there usability here- does this project make sense for ESIP to take on?
  • Karl: It does make sense in an activity that crosses a range of expertise across the Federation. We have a committee that can add more detail and an assessment of what technology is needed. It might be good to identify a working group within that committee to determine what kind of work is needed and how to develop the kind of support to that. Just need to get into more of the details of how to design it and execute it.
  • Mark: The scope of work should definitely include a user-need assessment that will be ongoing- first to identify what is needed, and also to provide feedback on the beta version and provide input throughout the process. User involvement is very critical throughout the process.
  • Tamara: It’s a great idea- you can develop this tools even beyond wind.
  • Kumar: This would just be a starting tool- and can be extended to other fields (like solar).
  • Mark: Focusing on wind and ecological habitats is important. Big elephant in the room is sea level change. A lot of agencies (people here at NOAA) are wondering if their satellite data is enough to get a handle on sea level change.
  • Kumar: This cluster is really focused on energy and climate. Some of the issues that came up are ‘will sea rise impact power plants in low-lying neighborhoods’. I think the methodology can be extended to other areas.
  • Uma: May be useful to see what other web services are available to make your public presentations more compelling.

Slide: Target Schedule

    • Oct 2011: Workshop (Washington, DC?): can invite selected users, developers and ESIP community to have a dialogue about the user requirements, what the needs are and potential solutions. ESIP could possibly sponsor this workshop.
    • Jan 2012: Architecture Draft (ESIP Meeting): At that point we’ll have more user requirements, needs and scope that can be discussed within the working group.
    • Jul 2010: Online System 1.0 (ESIP Meeting)
    • Jan 2012: Update v2.0 (ESIP Meeting)
  • Tamara: Having extended face-to-face discussion time would be very helpful.
  • Brian: There is this thing called NSF Earth Cube that I think ESIP might be trying to contribute to. There may be a meeting in DC around November that Carol is thinking of sending people to- so that may be a good time to hold the workshop.
  • Karl: One potential date was the week of October 30th- either the 31st of October or that first week of November but they’re still trying to figure out the structure of that meeting... One logistical model that could streamline this is if it had a home in the ITNI group: they can ask for funding.