Past Testbed Tasks

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ESIP Testbed Task Archive

Below is an archive of past Testbed activities with a short description for each.

Testbed Task 1: Expert Skills Database

The Federation collectively includes an exceptionally wide range of expertise among its participating members. These expert skills of Federation members will be categorized in a knowledge base and offered as a service. We use the master ESIP email list of over 700 names and Drupal tools to enable any member to associate their name to a skill and associated expertise level. Currently, the skill list consists of 60 information technology (IT) skills, but members can add additional categories. A GUI enables users to search this skill list by multiple criteria. http://www.esipfed.org/expert Ultimate Benefit: Promotion of expert skills available within the Federation.

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Testbed Task 2: Unique Data Identifiers

The Preservation and Stewardship Cluster and the NASA Technology Infusion Working Group have been considering permanent identifier schemes for data products http://wiki.esipfed.org/index.php/Preservation_and_Stewardship. These identifiers can serve as references in journal articles as well as inventory nodes in data archives and must include representations for versions of the entity being identified. Many identifier options have been proposed for different kinds of data, but the best choices for Earth science data require careful examination. For example, two datasets may differ only in format, byte order, data type, access method, etc., creating distinctions between them that may not be addressed adequately by identifier schemes used for typical "published" items such as books and journals. Last year's activity included a recommendation on identifier schemes to use for Earth Science data, but did not address the implementation issues that arise with the identifier schemes considered. The next Task for this work is to examine several different kinds of Federal datasets, assign identifiers from up to nine identifier schemes considered in the previously mentioned paper, evaluate and compare the implementation implications and other practical considerations associated with the use of each identifier scheme applied, and develop recommendations. Practical considerations may include the need to integrate with other metadata schemes such as ISO, and application to data citation formats and practices.

Ultimate Benefit: Permanent, unique names for Federation data products and recommendations for practice based on testbed experience.

Testbed Task 3: Semantic Registration of Data and Services

The Semantic Web Cluster has been developing ontologies for Data Service, Data types, and science concepts http://wiki.esipfed.org/index.php/Data_Service_Ontologies. The testbed enables providers to register their products and services semantically, which will provide more precise descriptions of their offerings. Ultimate Benefit: Better classification and discovery of specialized Federation products and services

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Testbed Task 4: Application-Specific Portals

The Air Quality Working Group has been developing an inventory of air quality data and data services. Other GEOSS Societal Benefit Areas could benefit from a similar capability to highlight offerings from Federation members. For this task, the Air Quality has been cloned for use by other application areas. Initially, a Water portal has been developed. Ultimate Benefit: Better marketing of targeted Federation products and services.

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Cloud Computing Resource Calculator

Many scientist and geospatial application providers are considering transforming their current computing infrastructure into clouds (IaaS and PaaS); however, it is a big challenge to select the most suitable cloud platforms and configuration solutions for the cloud novices and even for experienced cloud users. The Cloud Computing Resource Calculator meets this need by providing an advisory tool for:

1) Helping cloud novices understand the basic concepts and potential applications of cloud computing providers, services and technologies;

2) Assisting cloud computing early adopters to easily and effectively select the best solutions based on their unique application requirements; and

3) Periodically collecting/updating the mainstream cloud platforms’ information and build an expert system and database.

The project description and the tool link are available at http://testbed.esipfed.org/node/1244

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Data and information Quality

An automatic classification/annotation system that assesses, monitors, and accurately reports on the quality of ESIP data and services. The project sought to include: (1) a quality model and classification engine that established a set of quality metrics for data and services. The engine will automatically derive the quality of ESIP products and services, (2) work on metadata quality which is not usually addressed, and (3) accounting feedback from users to help rate quality of data and services.

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Open Search and Discovery

The Discovery cluster provides a medium for Federation members to coordinate on development, deployment, and creation of interoperable specifications for Discovery services such as OpenSearch, DataCasting, and ServiceCasting. The initial vision of the Discovery Testbed was to support the following items:

• Setup validation for registration of ESIP services
• Encourage the ESIP Community to register their services
• Provide some form of a service cast of registered services
• Chaining together of data and services - e.g., exploring data and services mapping, brokering

The Esri Geoportal Server was used in this case to provide such an interface. For more information, see the project page at http://wiki.esipfed.org/index.php/Discovery_Testbed_Work_Plan; the live instance is available at http://23.23.211.222:8080/geoportal/ .

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Data Stewardship

The datasets to be addressed will include a relatively simple image collection and a second containing granule-­‐level data objects such as a long­time series from multiple sensors / satellites. The project tasks include: (1) Preparing, transforming and performing quality control tasks on the metadata for each dataset in a storage environment that can be queried, and appended to add the identifiers from each scheme to each entity in the two datasets, (2) Map the existing metadata for each dataset into the metadata requirements for each identifier scheme for the purposes of identification and citation, (3) Track and discuss the implementation issues associated with each task per the questions previously identified by the Data Stewardship & Preservation cluster (see the initial list on the ESIP wiki at: http://wiki.esipfed.org/index.php/Implementation_Issues_to_be_addressed ), and others as they arise, (4) Bring implementation issues to the Data Stewardship cluster as needed for discussion and resolution/decision, (5) Develop list of practical considerations for each identifier scheme, and (6) develop draft set of best practices for discussion at future ESIP Federation meetings.

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Linked Open Research Data for Earth and Space Science Informatics

The ability to discover the technical competencies of other researchers in the Earth and Space Science Informatics (ESSI) community can help in the discovery of collaborations. In addition to collaboration discovery, social network information can be used to analyze trends in the field, which will help project managers identify irrelevant, well-established, and emerging technologies and specifications. This information will help keep projects focused on the technologies and standards that are actually being used, making them more useful to the ESSI community.

This problem was addressed with a solution involving two components: a pipeline for generating structured data from AGU-ESSI abstracts and ESIP member information, and an API and Web application for accessing the generated data. For more information, see http://wiki.esipfed.org/index.php/Linked_Open_Research_Data_for_Earth_and_Space_Science_Informatics.

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