EnviroSensing Monthly telecons

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Telecons are on the first Monday of every month. Click on 'join'

Schedule

• Next telecon: June 1, 2021 at 5:00pm EST

Notes and recordings from past telecons

To listen to recordings from past telecons, click here. To log in, use the username guest@esipfed.org, and the password Earth111.

12/07/2021

Envirosensing Monthly Meeting

[Link to Recording]

Attendees: Joseph Bell - USGS, Jake Gearon - Indiana University, ESIP Community Fellow, Scotty Strachan - UNV Reno, Envirosensing CoChair, Allison Mills - ESIP Comm. Manager, Kristina Fauss - UC Santa Barbara, Martha Apple - Montana Tech, Co-Chair of Envirosensing Cluster, Megan Carter - ESIP Community Director, Daniel Fuka - VA Tech University, Zachary Robbins - North Carolina State University, James Gallagher - OpenDap, David LeBauer- University of Arizona, Xi Yang - ESnet, Bar - ESIP, John Porter-UVA, Andrew Wiedlea - Energy Sciences Network (ESnet), Brian Wee - Massive Connections, LLC | Co-chair ESIP Ag and Climate Cluster

Announcements

• More info on the ESIP January Meeting including registration and the call for sessions: https://2022esipjanuarymeeting.sched.com/info
• Sign up for ESIP Winter Meeting! ^
• Specific session for Ag & Climate x Envirosensing
• Links from Allison:
  • ESIP Links:
    • Meeting registration: https://2022esipjanuarymeeting.sched.com/info
  • ESIP Update: esipfed.org/subscribe
  • Ignite! If you'll be at AGU add this to your calendar: gniteagu.io/

Notes

Call for a speaker at the joint Ag Climate & Envirosensing, reach out if so!

James Gallagher: building units and deploying/testing is difficult, want to go from star network topology to Mesh topology.  Asks if anyone has experience with simulating sensor networks.

• Power budget is limited, sensors can only function a few seconds per hour. Mesh networking edge nodes are senders and receivers, transmits are expensive. Simulating power consumption is ideal.

• Mini-net but for the edge, ability to simulate power budgets instead of just network topologies.
• https://www.dryad.net/. Presentation in mesh over LoRa at the Tactical Fire Remote Sensing Advisory Committee (TFRSAC: pronounced “tiffer-sac”) meeting co-organized by the USDA Forest Service / NASA on 2021-12-01 and 2021-12-02.
• Another link https://publish.illinois.edu/ymb/ that might be helpful
• Good computer science + engineering project to determine optimal power consumption for sensor networks (?). Could start with discrete sensor simulations, reaching out to DRYAD might be helpful. It may be proprietary but should be reached out to.
• Electrical engineering simulation + sensor network simulation. NSF may be interested in funding via CSSI, framework with element pilot then submit the grant :). The proposal to develop such a software would be worth conversation with a program manager
• David LeBauer sent link: https://beta.nsf.gov/funding/opportunities/communications-circuits-and-sensing-systems-ccss-0 for possible resource concerning Electrical Engineering research.

LoRa implementation, has anyone employed Dragino sensors?

• Programming was ‘funky’ re: multiple ethernet connections and poor documentation. Linux box with YUN + arduino. Therefore cannot run much code. Some units arent rugged enough to be outdoors
• Daniel Fuka: much of Dragino is simple via an OpenWRT interface. However, they do not allow multichannel LoRa unless you purchase a much more expensive unit. Not great about sharing source code. Sensors are efficient. They can be hardwired for more efficiency but a good place to start.
• Wondering about Dragino uses for meteorological applications. The unit with the combined MCU + LoRa. Cannot code to be only single channel.
• LoRa experimentation is usually one-off (individual sensors, gateways) How to deploy gateways at scale? Containerized + automated codestack. 10-20 that can all be updated in a uniform way. Any thought of software management automation with at-scale gateway deployments of LoRa?
• Daniel Fuka mentions he has backed out of LoRa at scale because you need reliable two way communication, range is degraded.

• Can you manage networked gateways easily?

• Cheap Dragino router has auto-update since its OpenWRT. Can establish connection and confirm updates remotely. On a 1x1 with autoupdates happening every few weeks. However, they do die sometimes!
• Final call for LoRa discussion: moving on to networking and network management from routing perspective

Question: are people running networks using one network point or multiple? If multiple, how do you allow sensors to utilize multiple network connections.

• John Porter: one wireless backhaul network with ethernet. Sometimes have radio serial links but are right on the net. Don’t have to deal with those issues of different routing.
• Would multiple paths out still be useful? Wanted? Or not needed at all?
• John Porter, if main node is down, network is down and is sometimes inaccessible. Have considered setting a cellular modem but routing questions make this difficult. Would consider doing something that is switched, RaspPi might check if primary network is up and then switching to a secondary if it isnt. Interested in LoRa but havent set up yet.
• Local Area networks which are tied back into a wider research network. Consider a classic network topology (WAN) that has multiple ways to get back to the network, cellular, p2p network, fiber, etc. routing on that uses classic IPV4 wide area routing protocols. Value in enterprise type routing with these networks. Multiple paths out will be feasible soon

There is a role for network engineering and organized sensor networks. How can we bring network engineering to scientific sensing networks? How to do this is a good question!

• Cross-training w/ graduate students could be useful, even just a little networking.

• Networking has to be a little simpler, though. Wired/Wireless with cell back up works but reverse engineering ad-hoc systems is still difficult. Simpler might be better.

• To what extent are folks thinking about two-way needs? Sensor retasking or algo changes.

• Starlink is cool but is large and requires a lot of energy. Might be too large for the usecase

• new versions of sensors will come out soon that are more efficient? Could be a space to watch. Some people are thinking of provisioning 5G directly from satellites to handsets (not possible now but maybe 5-10 years down the line)

Field has moved from specific science question sensor networks to more general. How can you change the velocity of data and make a network more responsive? Differential timescales of need depending on question.

• Want to be able to deploy systems capable of multiple tasks. Pushing automation might be more valuable

Daniel Fuka suggests FI dog collar (touches on multiple networks. Prefers bluetooth, then wifi, then cellular). GPS dog collar. Nice general target for networking.

• Cow collars for tracking/fencing collars in ag. V cool.

Any applications for drones? LoRa instruments cheap drones. Throw a package onto and network back through LoRa. get 9 km.

• Intel RealSense LiDAR unit. Have to fly at night. Connects to a raspberry pi which spits back data through wifi or possible LoRa with less data. Radar is wallobot (?) with api package and 15 different frequencies.

10/05/2021

Envirosensing Monthly Meeting

[Link to Recording]

Attendees: Joseph Bell, John Porter, Scotty Strachan, Ethan McMahon, Allison Mills, Kristina Fauss, Martha Apple, David Coyle, Guy Lit, Megan Carter, Daniel Fuka

Announcements:

Cluster is exploring collaboration with the Agriculture and Climate cluster relating to wildfire.

Notes:

• Possible collaborations with Agriculture and Climate Cluster relating to wildfire.

* Ag Climate and Envirosensing cluster share a transition zone: in situ monitoring and observation collection for analysis.

* New technology emerging in wildfire monitoring. Where are the knowledge gaps for both researchers and response teams, and how can new sensor technology address them?

* Emerging sensor technology with a wildfire focus: Wildfire detection using cameras placed on a tower with landscape view, smoke detection triggers camera to zoom in and run other algorithms detecting fire/ignition.

* UC San Diego is generating real time fire spread model maps based on local meteorology and ignition points.

• Discussion on spatial locations and the sensors available to assess what we have and where it may work:

* Feasibility to air drop (consumable) sensors into wildfire zones.

* "Sit and wait" - type sensors that chirp periodically and ping on detection of an event.

* Citizen science in the deployment of small sensor networks (dormant, pre-fire).

* LORA logistics and feasibility: canopy penetration, functional in ravines or complex terrain?

* 3D printed weather stations are being produced, build on this idea.

* Immediate Post fire data collection is also important - soil hydrophobicity is important to know immediately after the fire due to direct impact on flood risk and ecosystem recovery; typically measured manually but may be an opportunity for drone deployed sensors.

** Building on above: With drones, instead of using imagery, equip the drone with multispectral radar - before and after precipitation event to capture state change at the surface - however the inexpensive L515 Intel Lidar ($300) sensor is being discontinued

• What sensing would support teams fighting fire?

* Tracking people - including location, but also time since deployed or most recent rest.

* Smart home sprinklers - which would allow the firefighting team (or automatic heat detection) to turn on sprinklers in the community. However this is dependent on electricity & internet (vulnerable during wildfire), a problem of network resilience ~ LoRa, Starnet

* Telemetry challenges: LoRaWAN is a multifrequency gateway, requires 2 way communication, acknowledgement, and often authentication - less capable for the above uses? 

* USGS Geohazards program is looking into this, absent from charter is a connection with local infrastructure and municipalities.

09/07/2021

Envirosensing Monthly Meeting

Guest Speaker Amber S. Jones: Techniques for increased automation of aquatic sensor post processing in python.

[Link to Recording]

Attendees: Joseph Bell, John Porter, Scotty Strachan, Kristina Fauss, David Coyle, Guy Lit, Megan Carter, Daniel Fuka, Amber Jones, Jeffery Horsburgh, Bill Teng, Felimon Gayanilo, Matt Bartos, James Gallagher, Adam Kennedy, Renee Brown, Brian Wee

Announcements:

• ESIP Sponsored Bystander Training: September 27, 2021

• Envirosensing and Ag & Climate Cluster may be partnering on sessions in the summer/winter meetings; Envirosensing members are invited to join Ag & Climate Cluster Monthly meetings.

Timestamped Notes:

12:30 Guest presentation begins:

14:00 Challenges of post processing: Sensor Quality Control 

14:25 Challenges of sensor quality control: large volume of data, tool accessibility, tedious, large discrepancy of corrections made by technicians - need for reproducibility and standards.

15:30 PY Hydro QC: Python package for quality control available on github, open source.

16:15 Package workflow:

* Rules Based preprocessing - anomalies are identified using basic rules, such as values recorded out of the possible range of a sensor.

* Calibration preprocessing - drift of aquatic sensors disturbs calibration, but this can be fixed in this stage.

* Regression models - ARIMA and LSTM models explored; model estimates and residuals help identify anomalies.

* Anomaly detection and post processing - thresholds determine whether a point is classified as an anomaly; a widening function may be used to classify anomalous events from points; an aggregating function may incorporate detections from multiple models.

** 21:10 Detection Results: In comparison of algorithm detections to labels applied by technicians the ARIMA model performed best; oversensitivity is preferred over undersensitivity - too many detections can be narrowed down by a technician.

* Correction - ARIMA models are used to generate a forward cast from pre-event data and a backcast from post-event data, which are blended to create the model correction; the algorithm is able to forecast diurnal cycles.

25:17 Conclusions and Recommendations: 

* Rules based detection is an important component and could be made more complex.

* Drift correction and calibration can be the most time consuming step in manual QC and therefore automation should be increased, which should also increase consistency.

* The model presented was effective and its sensitivity was dependent on threshold settings.

* The correction algorithm was able to approximate diurnal patterns and each event does require review.

* The package can be used in script or notebooks but does require some python experience.

* Package design is modular and is therefore able to accommodate future additions to the QC process.

* Technician review is required for points noted by the model, but far fewer than purely manual QC; technician review is required for corrections, but the model is able to provide corrections a human could not.

27:45 Presentation concludes; Q&A:

Updates on work: Package is now published on the python package index, so it may be installed into a user’s python environment, examples are also available online.

A couple of the models tested were multivariate, but generally did not outperform univariate alternatives.

Calibration events - model assumes technician will supply a date of calibration for drift correction.

Addressing codependence? This could be implemented as rules defining specific “impossible” conditions among multiple variables (at the “Rules” Step).

47:20 New Discussion Topic: Ag & Climate Cluster will be discussing the best ways to observe pre, during, and post wildfire processes; such as merging remotely sensed and in-situ data.

* Ag & Climate Cluster will be hosting wildfire management and mitigation stakeholders over the next three months - what do they need and where can technology fill the gaps?

06/01/2021

Envirosensing Monthly Meeting

[Link to recording]

Attendees: Matt Bartos, Scotty Strachan, Ethan McMahon, Kristina Fauss, Renee Brown, David Coyle, James Gallagher, Guy Lit, Megan Carter, Daniel Fuka, John Porter

Announcements:

Summer meeting session: 3 people confirmed… a few more in the works

Notes:

• Vendor Discussion

How to bring in vendors to the Cluster?

* Megan: connected with someone from FieldKit —> will send that info to Cluster leadership team

* Some concerns about bringing in vendors, don’t want it to be a sales pitch

* James: what about Sparkfun or adafruit?

* Scotty: likes James’ idea of bringing in open hardware vendors since we’re already working in this space.

* Megan: With respect to FieldKit, I’d be curious to ask them to talk about their vision for the wiki of open-source sensor information they are planning to build. And what they plan to include and who do you want to contribute/most collaborate with?

* John: ask vendors to tell a story.. e.g., what is the story behind a successful sensor? What are the trends you’re seeing?

* Megan: harness the ESIP theme of this year- innovation.. Tell us a story about that.

• Virtual office hours

* Scotty: what if (in lieu of virtual microtutorial project, for now because people are still overloaded with commitments due to covid, etc.) Cluster offered “virtual office hours” that could be broadcast to email list and beyond?

* Ethan: +1 re office hours. It's similar to data stewards. Our cluster would serve as a resource and learn and document what we hear.

* Megan: Agreed on office hours also - will take some effort to recruit people to come ask questions, though, so good to develop a communication plan re: the opportunity. Hardest part is getting people to show up. Recommend keeping it during the regular meeting time to simplify workload

* Renée: like the idea of doing this 1-2x year during telecon.

* Ethan: I agree. We don't know if there are others in the ESIP realm who are interested; if they are interested then why haven't they attended these meetings

* Megan: reach out to your networks

* Ethan: how about we do this within our own Cluster? This could be a place where cluster members could ask each other questions about their problem.

* Megan: That’s a really good point - these calls should benefit you all - not just be a service to others.

* Matt: Setting up a new lab, has to go through digikey (can’t purchase through adafruit or sparkfun)... has questions about what to buy. Second example, for office hours- opened a discord server with the intent of having students talk to each other- but they ended up having questions for him… a perpetual office hours. For office hours, definitely need one or more persons to lead it to help with organizational structure

* Scotty: we also have a Slack channel… we aren’t using it.

* Megan: can use Data Help Desk model… use a form to ask people to submit questions

* Megan: can there be a connection between Virtual Office Hours and microtutorials?

* Scotty: yes

• • Summer meeting session:

* 3 people confirmed… a few more in the works

* How much time should we set aside for discussion?

* Daniel has a topic he could talk on if there is a slot available re: PCBs

** He also suggested Nate, founder of SparkFun 

** James: @Dan Who do you use for PCBs and population?

** Dan: Makerfabs is our last batch, but using their open design. https://www.makerfabs.com/

• ESIP Lab:

* https://www.esipfed.org/lab/funding-opportunities/2021-spring-esip-lab-request-for-proposals

* Daniel is putting something in

• Daniel Fuka to Everyone (3:59 PM)
  • Here is a fun LoRa based soil moisture sensor we are testing and I am adapting to add GPS
  • https://www.makerfabs.com/wiki/index.php?title=Lora_Soil_Moisture_Sensor#FAQ

05/04/2021

Envirosensing Monthly Meeting

[Link to recording]

Attendees: Matt Bartos, Joseph Bell, Scotty Strachan, Ethan McMahon, Kristina Fauss, Renee Brown, Adam Kennedy, Martha Apple, David Coyle, James Gallagher, Guy Lit, Megan Carter, Daniel Fuka

Announcements:

Summer meeting Flash Talks proposal accepted - very short, what are your recent successes? Can be “half-baked” - there will be an email going out soon for presenters, topics can be broadly related from physical sensors to data quality control (but EnviroSensing generally not focused on satellites sensors)

Please submit presenters for the ESIP Summer Meeting EnviroSensing Cluster session!

Two complementary speakers who have not been to ESIP before (Megan)

Notes:

• General Discussion

* Shifts in funding are coming from the federal level with the new administration, expect new govt budget on climate change, covid, and the economy and air water budget changes - opportunities to fund sensors to be placed outside of typical natural pristine areas, like metropolitan areas.

* Public summaries of budget changes published, Ethann McMahon will send for distribution to cluster/ESIP listserve or slack: Biden’s budget request (https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/FY2022-Discretionary-Request.pdf) (58 page version). 3 page summary (https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/FY2022-Discretionary-Request-Press-Release.pdf)

• Telemetry Discussion

* Mixed wireless and wired networking (for research) needs help to scale up

* New opportunities opening in the fields of telemetry and end-to-end data flow for our community to engage on these topics and contribute expertise; there is funding available for broadband connectivity for education, hard to reach communities, and science - these opportunities tend to be missing people with expertise like that of Envirosensing members

* Adam shared updates about Andrews wireless: Wired Internet has been down since last year’s wildfire, was previously T1 line, but has upgraded to Ubiquiti AirFiber line with 4’ dishes (wireless communication), but now fighting to defend unlicensed bands, it’s exciting that 6ghz is being added to unlicensed channels. How do we remain on a clean frequency on the unlicensed band? How do we generate revenue to support the service (which is expensive to maintain)? Is using low-power Ubiquiti radios (2.4 Ghz + 900 Mhz) for internal network connections that are only turned on when needed to save power, especially in the winter, feasible? Options for up sites with to 75 people during the summer, all of our telemetry passes through the system?

* David: Ondas.com https://www.ondas.com/ 

* Joe: GOES channels are going private (GOES is a satellite-based telemetry)

* Renee: There is an extensive wifi network at Sevilleta through Ubiquiti, there is also good line of sight which allows good wireless links and good bandwidth at the field station. The water quality monitor sites are in remote places with no cell service - impractical to set up a wifi network there. In Antarctica, Iridium is the only thing that works. Using Ubiquiti mostly now, standard wifi, radios, recently converted 2g to 5g - Are you using standard wifi vs proprietary for ubiquiti? Anyone have experience with this?

* Adam: Just bought some AC’s Airview M2 nanostation , we don't have any concern with anything Ubiquiti might change to - all is compatible within Ubiquiti, biggest benefit is to go down to 5200 frequency as it is cleaner => recommendation get a couple and see how they work

* Renee/Adam: Wired connection is vulnerable to physical damage (fire, cut). Wifi is a good backup but we need better than 1g for today’s data expectations

* Scotty: Starlink has advantages, particularly if Starlink starts including mobile applications

* David Coyle: Starlink (unlike Iridium) does not have many fail safes/redundancy

* Scotty: Starlink goes down sometimes, but when it’s up it works really well, could work well as a secondary/tertiary internet connection depending on the application

* Dan: Lora is 250 bytes per second

04/06/2021

Envirosensing Monthly Meeting

[Link to recording]

Attendees: Scotty Strachan, Kristina Fauss, Daniel Fuka, James Gallagher, John Porter, Felimon Gayanilo, Ethan McMan, David Coyle, Joseph Bell, Martha Apple, Megan Carter, Renee Brown, Jay Pearlman

Announcements:

There will be a data help desk - watch ESIP channels, all help is welcome.”Curious about the Data Help Desk at EGU21? Check out http://bit.ly/DataHelpEGU21.”

Summer session proposals by April 16 “ESIP Summer Meeting details: https://2021esipsummermeeting.sched.com/info (registration open now and sessions accepted now through 4/16)”

No envirosensing AGU session this year - wait till next year/AGU is back in person, but feel free to reach out if you have questions or would like support in your own AGU activities

Notes:

• AGU Discussion

* AGU accessibility does not compare online vs in person

* Unclear if AGU will be fully virtual or not

* MacGyver session at AGU might be a good place for Envirosensing member topics, Envirosensing cluster will not be organizing a session

• Video Microtutorials

* How to continue knowledge transfer/teaching/discovery, building on momentum from the world moving virtual 

* Are there existing tools/templates/guidance to produce?

* Work towards developing a task matrix

* Important to include in microtutorials: Order of operations, plan or strategy relating to the instruments, transferring tacit knowledge, knowledge of hazards

* Address the problem: saturation of poorly organized material, not easy to get what you need (accurate, detailed quality) on a quick pass

* How to classify, order, tag, summarize, so that people can decide if the tutorial suits their needs quickly

* What’s been done in the space? Resources on instructions/workflow to produce microtutorials, let’s find these and pool into a cluster resource

* Renee - Virtual Field Project: OBFS organization for biological field stations, has NSF grant for virtual field trips for their field stations and sites to expose students to different ecosystems

* Consider ways to include accountability for intellectual property, aspects of authorship

{in the chat: So are we talking about a curated list? Or our own videos? -> both are being considered}

* How to motivate researchers/technical experts -> CV items, elements of peer review? Items deserving of recognition, producing digital products within the scientific community

** Megan - “Credit for non traditional contributions and roles”

* Youtube videos have commercials - downside for instructional/informational video

** Megan - Alternative platforms, means to getting a doi: https://casrai.org; CRediT - Contributor Roles Taxonomy but not a place to view a resource

* Concept of “Folksonomy” - allow people to tag their own items

* Megan - “Also consider talking to the Data Management Training Clearinghouse - maybe inviting Karl Benedict or Nancy Hoebelheinrich in. Both would probably have a lot of thoughts here.” 

* John Porter - SCIVEE.tv used to be a YouTube-like site aimed specifically at scientific presentations, worked well but vanished one day when the funding ran out

• ESIP Summer Meeting, Envirosensing Session

* Open envirosensing session - what are you doing/excited about? Need speakers

* “Half baked” / Ignite concept - 15 min talks, flash - 3-5 min talks

* There will be 90 min total for the session

* Cross cluster - Pull in speaker from your "nearest neighbor" ESIP cluster; possible Ag-Climate

03/02/2021

Microtutorials and Oceans Best Practices

[Link to recording]

Attendees: Scotty Strachan, Kristina Fauss, Jay Pearlman, Matt Bartos, James Gallagher, Guy Lit, David Coyle, Renee Brown, Megan Carter, Christine Renee Gregg, Joseph Bell, Bar, Ethan McMahon

Announcements:

Joseph Bell is a new co-chair for the Envirosensing cluster.

Call for sessions for the summer meeting coming out soon.

Summer meeting will be virtual, likely July 19-23.

Notes:

• Video Microtutorials

* Determine best practices on production from youtube.

* Cluster discussion, who wants to step up to take on some of the pieces to developing microtutorials?

Community driven topic - what do you want to do next?

Test cases, best practices, to implementation.

* MicrogranPs from ESIP could support this.

• Oceans best practices - Jay Pearlman

* Presently working on a microtutorial for unbaited fish monitor - does it work, why does it work, what should you never do? - important to include "worst practices"

* Oceans Best Practices system: Way to foster quality control, consolidate best practice materials, open access

* Before recording, a promising method would have to be reviewed, accepted and deployed by multiple organizations within the community; ensures quality and consistency

Q across operations

Interoperabiltiy of data

* Data traceability and transparency

* Ocean Best Practices viewed as a repository from the beginning - under IODE, “Data Exchange” => ~1,200 best practices across oceans community, very broad from sensing to aquaculture

* The term "Best practices" can add a barrier to submitting -> “manuals” and “standard operating procedures” are more common terms

* Adding academic credibility -> peer review process and publication

* Ocean teacher global academy - training the trainer, working with established organizations, we don’t create the videos, we host them and make people aware of them

* No exclusivity, anything in the repository is open access

* Discovery of specific microtutorials may be easier on a specific site than youtube

* Expand into visual immersion techniques, CAD type designs -> giving tutorials in CAD/3d design

* Long term goal for a library of virtual training

* Concept for disk distribution in regions with low internet access

• Questions?

* Renee - How is Oceans funded? 

** Jay - European commission grant Atlantis, NSF funding started the foundation, UNESCO present funder of operations and staff, tech development is done under grants; a lot of volunteer support

* Renee - Most of us do not work in marine environments, how do terrestrial systems work fit in?

** Jay - Newly acquired grant for Arctic expansion - sea ice, land, and atmosphere; could advocate a “land” best practice system as a cluster

• Winter meeting recap

* Range of subjects to address through microtutorials

* Wide range of experience, capability, and focus represented in Envirosensing cluster

* Envirosensing has collective knowledge among members on how to make these microtutorials

* Need good metadata associated with videos to improve discoverability

01/05/2021

Envirosensing Cluster meeting, Pre ESIP Winter Meeting

Attendees: Martha Apple, Daniel Fuka, Ethan McMahon, James Gallagher, Joseph Bell, Matt Bartos, Megan Carter, Mike Daniels, Steve Young, Renee Brown , Scotty Strachan, Kristina Fauss

[Link to recording]

Recording Time Stamps:

0:00 Introductions

11:00 Cluster Announcements

11:35 AGU 2020 Recap

23:20 AGU Recap blends into discussion on Sharing Content

28:45 Winter Meeting Working Session Discussion & Microtutorials

54:53 Closeout

Notes:

• Recap & Discussion of AGU Participation

* AGU was virtual this year for Covid 19 Pandemic

* ESIP Envirosensing had its first proposal for sessions in AGU this year, which was merged with a similar proposed session

* Envirosensing session included both an oral and E-lighting poster session, which worked out to be quite similar in the virtual environment

* AGU session were more Q&A in the online format

* Matt - Envirosensing cluster could run a research expo building on AGU format

* E Lightening vs standard oral presentation format at AGU: The E lightning style AGU sessions promote more interaction, more of a community feel

• Planning for winter working session

* Could be a brainstorming exercise for virtual content, Asynchronous “Micro-Tutorials”, what works? Presentation style, recording style? How to structure a demo? Best practices and parameters for virtual demos?

* Development of mini tutorial videos for low cost, open source technology

* Brainstorm in breakout groups during winter meeting: What content to prioritize, video length, target audience(s), possible applications

• Ideas for microtutorials

* Provide members a platform to share valuable materials/info in one searchable place

* Share common techniques

* Balance between broad and technical

* Audience may be ESIP community, scientific community, students, technical hobbyists

• Additional Points

* Renee - yearly webinar series coming up, could feature participants

* ESIP lab proposals due Jan 29

* Do any members have any experience in media production?

10/01/2019

Recording and Transcript of Session

ESIP Envirosensing Notes - 10/01/2019

Attendees - Scotty Strachan, Connor Scully-Allison, Megan Carter, John Porter, Joseph Bell, Felimon Gayanilo

Notes:

• Scotty on National Research Platform

   *   There is a lot of opportunities for funding and collaboration

• NRP Workshop

   *   NSF Funded
   *   Support projects working on cloud-like technologies

• Workshop committee

   *   Universities, Internet2
   *   Usually heads of information computing
   *   CIOs
   *   Being driven by technology and infrastructure advisors

• Agenda

   *   Scotty highlighted the importance of internet of things in disrupting wireless research

• Internet of wild things: Driven workflows

   *   We can plug in many sensors on the ground
   *   Scotty received questions about the Delaware River Basin Pilot
   *   Many of these networks are very complex and coming very soon
   *   Software side
       *   Creating a software pipeline to scale and automate these things
       *   5TB/day of data

• NSF OAC

   *   Advanced Cyberinfrastructure Grants
   *   Important to be driven by Scientists and Science Problems
   *   A good opportunity to build infrastructure for small scale research and scale up existing research
   *   Cyberinfrastructure is growing in focus across NSF
   *   NSF has finally realized that CI is an ecosystem (not just HPC)
       *   Maps very well to the themes of ESIP
   *   NSF is aware that instruments and observatories include sensor networks
       *   But they are not looking very closely at grassroots network (yet)
   *   Science can transform how technology is being implemented
   *   Regional networks are pretty big for research and education
   *   Emerging people networks
       *   The ESIP model could work for them
       *   NSF CaRCC
           *   They have various working groups
           *   They want to become an ESIP-like community

08/06/2019

ESIP Envirosensing Notes - 08/06/2019

Attendees - Scotty Strachan, Connor Scully-Allison, Dawn Henshaw, Renee Brown, Felimon, David Coyle

Notes:

• Renee’s Thoughts

   *   Well attended
   *   About 50 People
   *   Very diverse group of people
   *   Might have been one of our best showings at ESIP
   *   Three topics of interest
       *   Visualization Dashboards
       *   Metadata Capture
           *   Specifically in regards to sensor related metadata
       *   Data Archival
           *   Raw sensor data 

• Scotty’s Thoughts

   *   James and Martha spoke on using LoRaWan
   *   In alpine environments
   *   Renee’s talk on McMurdo Dry Valleys

• General Feedback

   *   Felimon
       *   Agrees with earlier statements, likes topic and thought this was relevant
       *   Suggests a survey or ranking of vis tools
       *   Was looking for more on long term observerties
           *   How do they handle this data that has been captured for many years
           *   This group may want to explore data management for long term exploratories
   *   Don
       *   Really good presentations
       *   Well attended
       *   We should include LoRaWan in this summary in some capacity
       *   That was especially of interest to people 
   *   David Coyle
       *   (RE: LoRa) Plans to work with CMU to get some boxes for more integration into USGS pipelines and try them out in the field.
   *   Changes to three takeaways
       *   Three takeaways have been altered to combine current 2 & 3 and add LoRa as #3
   *   Open Hardware
       *   Felimon suggests us interacting with open/hardware community
       *   Scotty requests some names from people who participate in these community organizations. 
       *   Citizen Science and their own small Envirosensing projects
   *   Summer Meeting of 2020 - Session ideas
       *   Maintain a long meeting through multiple sessions in a row
       *   Each one organized around a theme
       *   And one final one for internal cluster town hall
       *   Don suggests an unconference for this last town hall

06/04/2019

ESIP Envirosensing Notes - 06/04/2019

Attendees - Scotty Strachan, Aaron Sweeney, Joseph Bell, Connor Scully-Allison, David Coyle, Ethan McMahon, John Porter, Matt Bartos, Megan Carter, Renee F. Brown, Lindsey Rustand

Notes:

• Welcomes and Introductions
• Renee and Scotty Solicit for Talks at ESIP summer

   *   Formal announcement going out on listserv (in next week approx)

• R&S Comment on Frontiers in Environmental Sensing Innovation workshop

   *   Organized by Cody Youngbull
   *   Cody is a hardware geek/ optical physicist
   *   Flathead lake is creating a center of excellence for sensors and aquatic research
   *   Scotty gave a talk there (pitching ESIP and our cluster)
   *   It was not just about lakes tons of IOT and future thinking discussions there

• Lindsey Rustad’s Talk

   *   Lindsey expresses appreciation for the envirosensing group
   *   Lindsey introduces herself:
       *   Forest Ecologist
       *   80s and 90s: she started with sensors
       *   Mary Martin was invaluable for helping to start up these sensors
       *   Enmeshed in sensors for the entirety of her career
   *   Presentation - WaterVIZ
       *   Making Data Available to a broader audience
       *   Water visualization and sonification tool
       *   How it works
           *   Hubbard Brook
           *   1955 Center of Hydrological Research
           *   Bowl-shaped valley
       *   Data transmitted via high power radios to a base station
       *   This data goes to visualization via charts and graphs along with artistic sonification/visualization
       *   Xavier Cortata - Produced artistic representation of all aspects of water cycle
       *   Data feeds the visualization
           *   Number of particles and speed are determined by live data
           *   “Near real time” data
       *   Sonification aspect
           *   Data drives a musical interpretation of the water cycle
           *   Marty Quinn 
               *   Musician who created the sonification
           *   Multiple years of data have been sonified
           *   15mins for the whole year
           *   Last hour of music sonified can also be heard
       *   Synchronized music and visualization
       *   Working with neuroscientists and exploring how we can engage auditory, visual and reasoning parts of brain\
   *   waterviz.org 
       *   Website for all of this

05/07/2019

Agenda for May, 7 2019 (times in EST)

Attendees: Connor, Scotty, Megan, Matt, Renee, Don, Joseph Bell, David Coyle, John Porter, Felimon Gayanilo, Jerry Butch

Notes

• Introductions
• David Coyle’s Presentation

   *   IT Specialist, USGS
   *   USGS NGWOS LPWAN Experiment 
   *   Wanted to experiment with LPWAN
   *   Next generation water observing system 
   *   Looking into off-the-shelf solutions for this system
   *   Studying the Delaware River Basin
   *   LoRa
       *   Has the best range of any other existing technology
       *   Enables sparse sensor placement
       *   Low power long range
       *   Network features with end-to-end security
       *   Data is encrypted at rest and in transit
           *   How does it accomplish this?
   *   Multiple classes of LoRaWAN
   *   Costs
       *   $500-300 with sensors
       *   $75 with a temperature probe
       *   Deployment is very easy with these solutions and inexpensive
   *   LoRa is Open Source under MIT license
   *   Developer kits can be purchased to build from the ground up
   *   LoRa Gateway OS
       *   Linux based
   *   LoRA Gatweway bridge 
       *   Uses MQTT
       *   Abstracts a lot of the tedious packagement code with UDP
   *   LoRa server
       *   Duplication and Failover of servers
       *   Real-time failover
   *   Risks
       *   Risks grow as we scale to industrial scale
       *   POC Purgatory: It never gets of the ground
       *   It’s not about “Tech” - it’s about business transformation
       *   Trade offs of building your own network 
   *   LoRaWAN Requirements
       *   Avoid feature creep
       *   Small data payloads and a small number of sensors
       *   Heterogeneous systems are possible (cell and lorawan)
   *   Advantages
       *   Can run an application closer to the geographic area
           *   Can you elaborate on how LoRaWAN enables this?
   *   Q&A
       *   Scotty asks about standards
           *   David references the CayenneLPP (The Things Network)
           *   He indicates that SensorML is maybe too big an encoding for this level of the infrastructure
       *   Scotty asks about use for such a use case as in the Great Basin
           *   David indicates that the architecture  can work really well for the connection of granular sensors
           *   Scotty indicates he could install a LoRaWAN gateway offer access as a service.

03/05/2019

Recording and Transcript of Session

ESIP Envirosensing Notes - 03/05/2019

Attendees - Scotty Strachan, John Porter, Matt Bartos, Connor Scully-Allison, Mike Daniels

Notes:*

Matt’s Presentation: Vehicles as ubiquitous precipitation sensors

The was a paper

What is the value of this?

Precipitation data is becoming sparse

Most sensors can only measure a point

The solution

One option is vehicles

They have sensors which can transfer data back

Windshield wipers as precipitation sensors

Study area was Ann Arbor

Map of single are trip shows a use case narrative and how it works

Use a video to determine the ground truth

Wiper Intensity does not significantly correlate to rainfall intensity

However wiper performs significantly better at determining the binary rainfall state

Produce a data product of combined radar and wiper data

Prediction performance was better than radar alone

Q&A:

Mike & Connor ask questions

Mike: How will you get data from Ford?

Connor: What was the computational intensity of this data synthesis? And, do you anticipate that this computation will scale well?

Matt: Its very computationally intense and may not scale well with more vehicles. It is easily parallelizable however due to the large time scales of the radar data

Scotty talks about the potential future viability of accessing and aggregating data from connected and smart vehicles.

Presentation session in ESIP Summer Session (Scotty and Connor will work on)

Document: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1BiZDxfGqTQMMy_yXhv6hTc9h-Y0YCVoBPlCduBget-Q/edit

Deadline: April 26th

02/05/2019

Recording of Session

Agenda for February, 5 2019 (times in EST):
Introductions - 5:00 pm (5 min)
ESIP Winter Meeting Review and Report - 5:05 (approx. 10 min) (Mike and Connor)
Project Reporting - 5:15 (approx. 5 min)
Discussion of 2019 Cluster Agenda - 5:20 (Remaining Time)

Attendees: Connor, Scotty, Megan Carter, Matt Bartos, Renee, Roger Tyler, Don Henshaw, Ethan McMahon,

Notes

Megan expresses support of this cluster

Indicates that this one most actively collaborates without her involvement

Introductions

Scotty suggests to Ethan opportunity for a future potential meeting topic.

ESIP Winter Recap

Connor Reviewed, Much of the envirosensing cluster was gone but well represented in the poster session with Mike and Connor

Matt indicates that Mike had positive feedback on Sensor DAT

A few parties are interested in the workflow and technology

Project Reporting

Progress has been made by Matt on using machine learning for Quality Control

He has a server that uses Graphana for visualization

The results are very impressive

Connor is exploring the use of source files to aid the ingestion workflow for Renee's data

Year’s Agenda

Scotty and Renee are attending the same workshop

Matt mentions PhD candidate collaborator in New Mexico

Suggests him for a talk

Scotty expresses interest

Matt mentions that he would like to give a talk on a paper he did concerning windshield wipers and water

Don

Recommends talk from Scotty/Renee related to what comes out of their New Mexico workshop

Scotty is hopeful about the opportunities for the year

9/04/2018

Recording of Meeting

Attendees:
Scotty Strachan
Matt Bartos
Ethan McMahon
Mark Gahler
Mike Daniels
Renee Brown
Cody Youngbull
John Porter
Connor Scully-Allison
Don Henshaw
Martha Apple
Vasu Kilaru
Jane Wyngaard
Stephanie Schmidt
Vincent Moriarty

Recap of summer meeting

SensorDat update

Presentation: Cody Youngbull

SensorSpace: A Cutting-Edge Facility for Environmental Sensor Design, Prototyping, Production, and Deployment

Oldest continuously operating biological field station in the US

Montana underserved area; field station marine laboratories grants

Sensorspace

Four major areas: manufacturing, electronics, optics, microfluidics

Universities often do not have adequate electronics/optics shops. Sensorspace fills this gap.

Full-service; not just manufacturing.

Cater almost exclusively to ecologists. Build prototypes.

Lower costs for nonprofits/academia

Help write grants

Electronics: Make custom low-power boards.

Optics: Sondes, Dissolved oxygen, dissolved CO2 sensors.

Instrument considerations: e.g. vandalism-proof; shotgun-proof enclosures.

World's only continuous-flow digital PCR machine.

Digital-droplet quantification: instead of a analog detector, use multiple binary detectors.

Digital-droplet quantification enabled by microfluidics: can create tiny droplets, then count presence/absence of analytes in each drop.

Making environmental sensor networks summer course.

Setting up a LoraWAN sensor network

Scotty: Ongoing trend, sensor development and sensor explosion. What are you teaching students about best practices for documenting site conditions and managing data?

Jane: Do you open-source your sensor designs? Cody: Yes

John: What is the "ideal student" for your summer course? Are you looking for advanced graduate students? Faculty? Cody: Yes, we need faculty. Contact me.

Mike: Which IoT platform are you using? Are you deploying to things like standards, controlled vocabularies and ontologies for metadata, variable naming, etc.? Cody: MySQL, node red, grafana.

Mark: When will the DO and CO2 sensors you're developing be available for purchase? How can we find out about it? Cody: In beta stage currently. Under $1000 for both logger and sensor. Beta list is open. How to do this? Set up an external company (LLC) with a research contract. Transfer 100% of profit to university.

5/01/2018

Attendees: Matt Bartos Janet Fredericks Mike Daniels Renee Brown Scotty Strachan

Scotty: NEVCAN network

Network in the great basin, funded from 2009-2013

Team of people (dozen co-PIs) interest in the intersection of water/plants/geography in the great basin

I came from the paleoclimate side; came on to lead the field team

Ten core sites, five additional sites

Science questions: change in ecohydrologic (vegetation) processes across valley-mountain gradients

All major great basin vegetation zones

Standardized WX weather sensor packages (WRCC)

Site-specific experimental deployments

Connected by digital data network

Weather and basic soil profile

3B sensor observations

4M camera images

Sites in Snake Range, Sheep Range

Sagebrush zone, pinyon-juniper zone, montane zone, subalpine zone

Data acquisition:

Campbell scientific dataloggers

3 second scan, 1/10/60 min tables

50+ variables

5-min upload, 1-yr local storage

PTZ cameras, 20 scenes

30-min PhenoCam FTP upload

30-min tree sap flow and diameter

Networks

Beyond the reach of cellular

4-100 km terrestrial wireless

12-30 Mbps station links

TCP/IP, private OSFP

Power systems

All standalone PV

Significantly overbuilt

Battery protection is key

MPTT chargers

Put solar panels higher than max snow height

60 degree shed angle

Parallel-redundant electrical generation and storage

Ventilation/condensation prevention using case fan

Tiered voltage cutoffs

Heating/cooling cuts off first, then cameras, then mission critical devices (comms/dataloggers)

Adopted a USGS site that was going to be abandoned

Management software

Simplifies/records field maintenance

Publications

Testing the daily PRISM air temperature model on semiarid mountain slopes

Biases in model based on source observations

Precipitation and conifer response in semiarid mountains

Rate at which precipitation arrives significantly affects soil moisture

The future

Keep sites running

Get endowment funding

Partner with good collabs

Keep improving data flow

Mike: Maintenance: cameras, riming issues. How often do you have to visit the sites? Scotty: About twice a year (mid to end of June, and then in October). Cameras definitely get rimed, but we also get direct sunlight.

Mike: What does QAQC entail. Scotty: Mostly range checks, etc. No trend analysis right now, although it is becoming more important as we approach 10 years.

4/03/2018

Attendees:
Matt Bartos
Don Henshaw
Felimon Gayanilo
John Porter
Mike Daniels
Renee F. Brown
Scotty Strachan
Vincent Moriarty
Corinna Gries
Janet Fredericks
Ethan McMahon

Envirosensing Summer 2018 Meeting Planning

ideas on what they would like to see us do

Additional standards

two IOT protocols

LWMQM and Coapp

Coapp very compressed data transmission protocol

Standards for manual user corrections of data

corrections and or annotations

without necessarily changing the data itself

markup language for manual user corrections of data

ways to annotate at the data point level

richer way of annotating individual data points

could be done with SQL or in NOSQL database

how does this relate to theme?

Automated quality control

broader category of data quality

CSSI elements to frameworks

standardized containers for QA and metadata capture

e.g., for iButton network

pass on to level 1 automated QA tests

simple, not as complex as GCE toolbox

help prepare more reliable datasets

Scotty working on proposal

would sensorML be helpful for ingestion

Mike also working on JsonLD extensions for real-time data sources

outline region - get summary of operational sensors, sampling rates etc.

How does jsonLD compare with sensorML?

schema.org used by google for finding related items

want to extend to data searches

json LD stands for Linked Data

schema.org relatively small set of ways to link data

would need extensions for handling datasets

in EarthCube focuses on data centers

working in new proposals on going to parameter level

Janet - sensorML is more content-rich

very broad!

want to extend work to come up with profiles manufactures can populate

archiving real time data

how often to update in portals etc. - best practices

connecting real time streams to archives

data descriptors for quality assurance and control

could we have a session on that topic?

what standard does (or doesn't) do for sensors

what are best practices, recommendations for new users

who would like to volunteer to talk about standards - metadata interoperability

would be good to hear about Coapp and ISPO

constraint application protocol - COAP

IPSO protocol for describing connected things including actuators

may not be mature, but has large user base...

very limited vocabulary for sensors

metadata capture, quality control, reporting quality control process

existing standards or new needed?

Smart Cities community is not yet at this point in terms of data interoperability

interested in monetizing

we have something to offer them

SWEET ontology - link to sensors not clear

Socioeconomic Value theme?

often collect data for specific purposes

but additional value may come from use by others

or could lead them wrong if metadata not complete enough to explain what has been done

getting better handle on collection of metadata

cautionary tales - what happens if we DON'T have the right tools for metadata

SNOTEL temperature data is a major cautionary tale in this way - Scotty

documentation is all manual

Smart Cities is huge socieconomic impact

tie to events

floods in Boulder  - models underestimated water content of clouds

Feedback on robust data corrections might be an interesting project (ties in above)

don't have good ways to track transformations could have one session more on annotation standards and another more on QA/QC

could be two complementary sessions

workflows then annotations and standards

if you are correcting data by adding offset, that is QAQC thing....

some drone folks think existing metadata standards are too onerous - perhaps

better to have big "bag of words"

more flexible standards

how signal processing techniques can uncover structure from unstructured data

e.g., Latent semantic indexing with frequency composition

similar idea, but for metadata

document, key values

could do a good presentation on that - but wear "mad scientist" hat....

hard to fit things in in field

there is ESIP funding for speakers in breakout sessions - not sure how to get that!

would be good to get Kirk to one of these sessions

have until the end of the month to do this

being part of ESIP governance helps

cluster can propose serial sections

QA workflows

metadata standards (and unstandards)

Scotty will put together and send to email list

would not mind 10-15 min per talk sequences with extended discussion

short presentations are good to start with - ideally WITHOUT conclusions

focused talks on specific standards

Can put directly into web site - long time to edit

3/06/2018

Attendees
Matt Bartos
John Porter
Aaron Botnick
Bruce Caron
Mike Daniels
Scotty Strachan
Jason Karl
Erin Robinson
Corinna Gries
Don Henshaw
Felimon Gayanilo
Vincent Moriarty

Presentation

Virginia Coast Reserve LTER

Data collected by individual researchers; metadata ingested; automated sensors

Weather station: combination temperature, humidity, wind, rain.

Several tide stations using radar. Shared in real-time with NOAA.

Ground water monitoring station

900 MHz IP, 2.4 GHz WiFi

Major stations: Broadwater tower, Machipongo station

Archiving and publishing data:

Level 0: raw data

Level 1: processed data

Level 2: value added data

Data collection: PC with LoggerNet to Unix Computer running SAS/R

Something missing from automater QAQC: user corrections/flagging (e.g. tipping bucket clogged).

Right now, hand-coded php with forms for user input.

User input entered into a database that can be queried.

Code to implement user corrections automatically generated (e.g. using R code)

Questions

Felimon: any documentation on how you do QC?

John: Documentation is the actual code template used to do the post-processing.

Felimon: Look into QARTOD for how specific variables should be QAQC'd: https://ioos.noaa.gov/project/qartod/

Don: Campbell, John L., Rustad, Lindsey E., Porter, John H., Taylor, Jeffrey R., Dereszynski, Ethan W., Shanley, James B., Gries, Corinna, Henshaw, Donald L., Martin, Mary E., Sheldon, Wade M., Boose, Emery R (2013) Quantity is Nothing without Quality: Automated QA/QC for Streaming Environmental Sensor Data (Pub. No: 4825, Journal Article)

Mike: Does user QAQC require people to be constantly checking the data?

John: User input usually a result of checking on the equipment.

Mike: Do you use controlled vocabularies, etc.?

John: Generally not. Many stations go back to the 1980's. Some stations have these vocabularies, and measurements from other stations are tied to these.

Corinna: @Felimon: Are you working with NCEI?

Felimon: Yes, we do upload to NCEI.

ESIP Summer Meeting Call for Sessions:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdsz5qX85-ZKHNsda8F0UY1iJeEOyUyFq40znk7z53U_1lvrA/viewform

2/06/2018

Attendees
Don Henshaw
John Porter
Scotty Strachan
Vincent Moriarty
Mike Daniels
Renee Brown
Aaron Botnick
Corinna Gries

Introduction

Recap of winter meeting

About 20 participants, from organizations including CUAHSI, EPA, etc.

Talked about sensor data workflow.

Gave survey on sensor data workflow.

Is this survey a useful product?

Comments on survey

Renee: In favor of distributing to a broader audience (LTERs, LBFS).

Renee: Few people using trusted repositories.

Mike: CHORDS trying to make use of trusted repositories more accessible.

Renee: Everybody is using different solutions. What's use in developing own solutions, as opposed to standards?

Corinna: DataONE is not a trusted repository; it is an aggregator.

Corinna: Coming up with a data model that works for everybody is too ambitious. Sometimes prevents people from properly using them.

John: Why so many solutions?: scale and resources, similarity of objectives, things change very fast.

John: As for vocabulary, scaling can be an issue. Process can become very difficult if number of terms is too large.

Don: Are we seeing any commonality of approaches?

Don: Were we supposed to be identifying bottlenecks in the survey?

Scotty: Some bottlenecks include: QC flagging process. Import configuration process. Overall development of modified data model.

John: Possibly only use a subset of the survey as a planning tool.

Scotty: Could be useful for a team of, say, civil engineers who are trying to write a proposal and figure out what tools they need. Most will not be thinking of trusted repositories, e.g.

Mike: In NSF community, more emphasis on taking more data and more measurements, as opposed to what is done with those measurements (are they well-documented, etc.).

Corinna: Don't give as many choices on survey, may be to constraining. PI's won't be planning at this level of detail, e.g.

Aaron: The more generic a tool is, the harder it is to learn.

Conclusions: trim down diagram to get rid of specifics. Focus on general technologies used.

ODM seems to be taking ODM in a lot of new directions---goal of end-to-end sensor data management?

Corinna: could be too broad. Hard to get data in, hard to get data out.

John: Standardized response blocks. Smaller number than in current survey.

Headers instead of diagrams.

12/05/2017

Attendees
Matt Bartos
Scotty Strachan
Don Henshaw
Paul Celicourt
Renee F. Brown
Jane Wyngaard

Discussion of plans for the winter meeting

Scheduled a working session for the cluster with John Porter

Use this session to sit down, talk about workflows for end-to-end sensor data management

Everyone will hopefully have a cross-section of where high-performance/gaps in performance

Don: See what software people are using in the field, what loggers are used, how data is sent back to base station?

Scotty: Have a system diagram available for everyone to show their workflows and see where they can use particular tools.

Paul: Is the working session going to be interactive?

Scotty: Depends on how many people show up. If there are 20 people, e.g., have a brief synopsis, have an exercise in which people explore different architectures and see how their workflow fits in.

Else if there are very few people, go around and describe for each user.

Don: Have you described that in the abstract?

Scotty: we kept it general.

Don: We should say "attendees should come prepared for participation"

Scotty: Concurrent with OGC, metadata carpentry, earth data science analytics, valuables consortium session (and one more)

We we should do this next year:

Alternating monthly phone calls:

(i) cluster work, potential publications

(ii) Guest speakers present 20-30 minutes on an aspect of their research

Mature workflows

Completely different workspaces. Preferably earth sciences, but different.

Renee: Would like to see NEON again.

Scotty: Celeste had sensor network destroyed by wildfires (had insurance); would be interesting to see how they rebuild it.

Renee: What topics would you all be interested in?

Don: Touch base with the group and see if they have any updates.

Other things:

Jane: How does the winter session fit into the FAIR data concept.

Scotty: Look at how well workflow fits into the FAIR concept. Large strategic impact is FAIR concept; tactical focus is how to do you manage increasing volumes of data with decreasing person-hours.

Jane: OGC will be at this winter meeting.

Scotty: Many groups are using a modified ODM CUAHSI data model. Similar to what Jane is using.

Jane: Can likely find speakers in RDA groups.

Don: Sustainable data management group has an ESIP wiki with notes on FAIR data.

Skip January telecon; reconvene in February.

11/07/2017

Attendees
Ethan McMahon
Felimon Gayanilo
Janet Fredericks
Renee F Brown
Colin Smith
Corinna Gries
Don Henshaw
Matt Bartos

Preliminary remarks

senior project on CHORDS at University Nevada Reno

Continuation of discussion on cluster goals: summary

Time to start summarizing key software tools, seeing how they can fit together and where the gaps are

If someone has to spin up a new sensor network from scratch, how could they use a set of tools to streamline the process

How to have information be interoperable?

Submitted a working session to the ESIP Winter Meeting

To plan for taking first step forward over the next couple years

Co-organizers are Scotty and John Porter

Renee stepping up to be a new co-chair for the Envirosensing Group

What would you suggest to a brand-new network manager on what they should do, what tools should they use?

Literature review for each of the main boxes

Corinna: most interesting part to talk about are the arrows.

Define what the arrows represent

How many arrows could sensorML satisfy?

More MLs than sensorML:

WaterML, EML

Data Turbine as a vehicle?

Where would it fit in, does it fit in?

Hasn't been used, because Campbell provides all the services in the management interface.

Has anyone done a study on how long it takes to set up and configure a sensor data management system?

There are some aspects of QC that can slow down transfer of streaming sensor data to the database

OGC SOS and OpenSensorHub handles many of the things on the diagram

Ethan McMahon: Is there a general diagram?

http://im.lternet.edu/resources/im_practices/sensor_data

http://im.lternet.edu/node/963

Take homes:

- Scotty: the Cluster needs to define a topic objective with specific goals for the next 1-2 years. We have been spending most of our effort looking at software tools and workflows for sensor network scientists and managers. We could detail some of this, enhancing the resources already available in the Best Practices. Our goal should be to reduce IM time spent on managing data, to increase scalability and focus more on quality. Streamlining the setup/config/monitoring processes is key, while including community standards and external connectivity.

- Updating a workflow model graphic would give helpful guidance, modify Scotty's?

- Matt: a literature review of each sector of the workflow (tools, practices) would be very helpful, and we could add those to new Guide documents.

- Corinna: the challenge is in defining what the flows between software elements consist of (formats/contents/sizes/standards). The group could spend worthwhile time on that.

- Matt: SensorML as a primary communications medium between softwares - how much does it already cover, and could it use improvement?

- We could take a "use case approach", where as an exercise we have IM's fill in the blanks on a model graphic with their solutions, highlight the bottlenecks, and make suggestions or wish lists. - Felimon: we should have a presentation by 52north, they may have solved many of these problems or have good component solutions?

- Other resources to explore as we set up this topic: OpenSensorHub, SensorML, EML, WaterML, OGC-SOS (standards)

10/03/2017

Attendees
(Incomplete list) Don Henshaw
Scotty Strachan
Matt Bartos
Janet Fredericks
Ethan McMahon
Jane Wyngaard
John Porter
Felimon Gayanilo
Vasu Kilaru

Intro - Scotty

software framework for data management

working on proposal

but could have community projects

diagram shared by Scotty

where does FRAMEWORK fit in - dashed line

into structured database a la CUASHI

GCE toolbox example of stand alone software

description of diagram

interfaces to sensor systems

database structure built along community standards

metadata and data proceed in parallel

harkens to FAIR principles for data management

discussion

definitely worthy of groups consideration

interested in relation with OGC and sensorWeb

Corinna input?

I was hoping Jeff would jump in, he's done most of this from the CUASHI perspective

EDI can't do all of what is in diagram

more interested in matchmaking

want as modular as possible so we can insert expertise into particular areas

Jeff Horsburgh

knowing what we've worked on

many pieces worked on as open source

utility is variable

community to work on them would make it better

discussion

still a gap , hard to spin up CUASHI software

database structure & standards - should follow what has already been done

worthy goal to pursue?

is this thinking too big for the cluster attention?

Two questions

some providers take the lions share of IOT platform - Azure, Google, IOT etc. role in providing interface for embedded devices

what external connections would you like to integrate with

open question

could use a wider array of definitions for inputs

brining in metadata from a community should only require setting up once

include built-in test cases - automated continuous development process

might be best to make end-to-end system work with most popular systems real-time applications

probably not - in external connections is near real time

lessen work for IMs etc.

or focus on practices

GCE toolbox actually covers a LOT of this ground

but built on top of Matlab

specialized metadata

can use some "lessons learned" from it

as Corinna said, would like to see modular with well-documented interfaces, perhaps as web services

could go "box by box" for discussions of what is needed and what is already working

develop some use cases

develop cluster goals

need to focus on interface/APIs between boxes

that allows others to build code on either end independently

Like modular approach - talking about process boxes

AND uses diverse software as processing

Loggernet to GCE Toolbox to CSV to DB

could fill out - broaden input

identify and move forward on generic pieces

XDOMES at Winter Meeting - will this topic be discussed there

want outreach to make a larger group available

would have no problem proposing session at winter meeting

we know how to do this as individuals - but tools for new person don't exist yet

would be good to leave some blank boxes in framework and let others fill it out

modularity sounds good - importance of pieces varies between groups

would like a plug-and-play framework

overlaying pieces on framework would identify holes and what plays well together

Would like both higher and lower level documents

need to communicate with managers and programmers

Next call

run through ideas on how data flows from place to place

identify places where other boxes are needed

09/05/2017

Attendees
Don Henshaw
Scotty Strachan
Matt Bartos
Renee Brown
Cove Sturtevant
Cody Flagg
Janet Fredericks
Ethan McMahon
John Porter
Felimon Gayanilo

Recap of summer meeting

Janet's session

Wade's session

Funding Friday Prize

Cove Sturtevant (NEON) - Mobile Applications for maintenance and Field Data

Instrumented Systems

IS Science Data Quality Monitoring - automated flagging of data

Adding separate system for sensor health monitoring

Quality monitoring application

Science review

Rolling analyses

Maintenance records

• Q: Where do you put in biases and offsets for individual sensors?
• A: This is done in calibration lab.

• Q: Are standard QAQC measures used? (ioos.noaa.gov/project/qartod)
• A: Not yet.

• Q: Are technicians viewing this in field on their phones? Do they need access to cell/wifi?
• A: Generally use ruggedized tablets. Can pre-download data if there is no connectivity.

• Q: Where do you get the barcodes from?
• A: We make them.

• Q: How long does it take to develop apps?
• A: Single applications can be developed in less than a day. Some applications are drag and drop and can be made in a couple hours.

• Q: What is the cost of fulcrum
• A: Standard, Business, Professional. Standard is $18 per device/user per month.

06/06/2017

Attendees
Don Henshaw
Matt Bartos
Scotty Strachan
Renee Brown
Wade Sheldon

Announcements
Renee - McMurdough LTER Data Manager

Discussion of Summer Meeting Sessions

No response from DataONE yet

Four speakers right now: Matt Bartos, Mike Daniels, Mike Botts, Wade Sheldon

Poster draft

Cluster emphasis

End to end sensor data management

Best practices for deployment are fairly mature

Questions

2 & 3 Priority for envirosensing cluster

Raw vs. curated / snapshot vs. linking / strategies for metadata / sensorML vs. tabular / provenance -- how to link back to earlier versions, which data to keep

Skip July meeting; skip August; reconvene in September

05/02/2017

Attendees
Don Henshaw
Amber Jones
Matt Bartos
Felimon Gayanilo
Janet Fredericks
Martha Apple
Jason Downing
Paul Celicourt

Introduction

Discussion of Envirosensing Panel

Panelists

Confirmed

LTER

Data ONE

NCEI

Possible

EPA/NASA

ARS (agricultral research stations)

Earthcube

National snow and ice data center

Questions for panel

1. Data submission protocols
   1. What are the proper protocols and standards for submitting data to repositories?
   2. e.g. should data be sent as snapshots or streams?
2. Integration with real-time streaming sensor networks
   1. What APIs are available for automatically pushing data to a repository?
   2. How can repositories encourage participation from small research labs that maintain their own sensor networks?
3. Data Quality
   1. Should repositories have a role in assuring data quality?
   2. What type of quality control should be performed before submission to repositories?
   3. Should repositories provide checks for data quality?
   4. How should storage of metadata associated with data quality be handled?
4. Data curation
   1. Who should be responsible for data curation: submitter or publisher?
   2. Would it be helpful to have an external rating system for data quality/usefulness?
5. Data duplication
   1. What is the proper way to deal with syncing and duplication of datasets across repositories?

04/04/2017

Attendees Matt Bartos
Scotty Strachan
Mike Daniels
Jason P. Downing
Renee F Brown
Don Henshaw
Bruce Caron
Mike Botts
Wade Sheldon
Amber Jones
Ethan McMahon
Janet Fredericks

Introduction

CHORDS: Cloud-hosted real-time data services for the geosciences

Real-time data is of critical and growing importance in the geosciences

Necessary for hazards like floods, earthquakes, etc.; but also field experiments

Enhances rates of data transfer from the field will improve data quality and research outcomes

Organizations like NCAR have great real-time visualization tools, but the data are not easily accessible

Small research teams are taking valuable measurements that could also be of broad benefit

However, these data often aren't accessible to the broader community

Case studies:

Studying evaporation in the great lakes

Using infrasound to detect severe weather

Volcano monitoring in Tanzania

Crowdsourced real-time data helping to measure and predict earthquakes

Web of sensor data can be challenging to manage

Varying spatial scales, flags, metadata

Most scientists don't want to spend time reading standards

Enter CHORDS

Chords emphasizes simple ingest and access to real-time data

Meant for scientists who want to spend time doing science rather than managing data.

Can be set up using Amazon Web Services by a lay-user.

Data is pushed using simple HTTP GET requests.

Live demo of portal

Implementation details

SensorML used to register each site.

Data fetch via geojson, csv, etc.

Data stored in influxdb, MYSQL used for metadata

Connects to grafana for visualization.

Version 1.0 scheduled for October 2017

Automatic DOIs for data

Implementing OGC standards

Event triggers

CHORDS architecture

Portals operated by individuals feed into processing, translation, mapping services.

Workflows to integrate with archiving services.

URL

http://ncar.github.io/chords/

Discussion on plans for the summer

Decided on a breakout session, along with a panel.

Breakout group will focus on end-to-end sensor systems.

03/06/2017

Attendees:
Don Henshaw
Matt Bartos
Andrew Rettig
Ethan McMahon
Janet Fredericks
John Porter
Mary Martin
Paul Celicourt
Scotty Strachan
Vincent Moriarty
Martha Apple
John Andersen

Notes

Paul Celicourt - An end to end automated environmental data collection system

Objective: develop an integrated data acquisition system.

Incorporates sensing, data management, publication and analysis into the same package.

Secondary objectives:

Self-organized sensor network.

Platform-independent and protocol-agnostic.

Software application to encode and decode sensors and sensor platform descriptions.

Hardware supports most popular data interfaces.

Data publication in different formats and unit systems.

Hardware costs less than $200.

System operation and network organization

TEDS are used as a mechanism to provide metadata to each station prior to deployment.

Use CUAHSI ODM data format and Django Web Framework for automated data management.

Field deployment in Brooklyn.

Uses Zigbee protocol.

Software tools: PyTED. Sensor description using IEEE 1451 standards.

Software tools: HydroUnits. Dimensional analysis in Hydrologic computing systems using sensor-based standards.

Summary

System is capable of handling data collection, transmission, management and publication.

Effective in reducing field data acquisition workload and reducing human errors.

Currently developing an online configuration and programming tool.

Janet Fredericks - Update on XDOMES project

SensorML editor working, but need to develop more manufacturer-friendly vocabularies.

Want to encourage sensor manufacturers to create content.

Sensor manufacturer suggested not only creating document, but also an ID for each sensor that can be used by data managers.

Link to sensor registry spreadsheet added to wiki page.

Schedule time for showing sensorML editor at upcoming telecon.

02/06/2017

Attendees:
Scotty Strachan
Matt Bartos
Don Henshaw
Janet Fredericks
John Porter
Paul Celicourt
Vasu Kilaru

Notes

Matt Bartos - Wireless sensor networks for smart water infrastructure

Overview of research efforts underway at the University of Michigan Real-Time Water Systems Lab.

Description of wireless sensor node hardware and data backend.

Two ongoing applications:

Using wireless sensor networks for real-time flash flood monitoring in the Dallas--Fort Worth Metroplex.

Using wireless sensors to optimize stormwater quality via automated control infrastructure in Ann Arbor, MI.

Janet Fredericks - Update on XDOMES

Current efforts

Overhaul so users can create re-usable models of sensors with rulesets.

Release of sensorML editor ongoing.

Goals for cluster

Create vocabularies that manufacturers can reference (e.g. sensor types, observable properties).

Sensor vocabularies should be domain-driven rather than manufacturer driven.

Remove ambiguities in vocabularies (e.g. beam strength vs. sensor strength).

Identify some example cross-domain sensors.

Immediate goals

By March meeting: Have sensor types and observable properties.

Make spreadsheet (SensorType and ObservableProperties) a google doc that is linked to from envirosensing page to invite more community participation.

Plans for next telecon

Doodle poll to set time for upcoming meetings (effective April).

12/05/2016

Attendees:
Don Henshaw
Janet Fredericks
Alison Adams
Scotty Strachan
Andrew Rettig (started work with ES cluster several years ago, stopped about a year ago; teaching ES networking at U of Dayton)
Erin Robinson
Janet Fredericks
Vasu Kilaru
Felimon Gayanilo
Eric Fritzinger (works with Scotty)
Matthew Mayernik

Notes:

Discussion of what is needed from community to enable semantic and syntactic interoperability

Sensor manufacturer responsible for making OEM model description

creates a unique identifier for each sensor

SensorML file is created and belongs to sensor owner

Data managers describe processing that's done

Documents reference terms that have meaning --> reference ontologies

Hoping to get community to help with development of ontologies, esp in communities Janet isn't a part of (i.e. not in oceanography comm'ty) -- then Janet can work with sensor manufacturers to reference those terms

Recorded presentation includes example ontology form; Wiki reference links should include date accessed

MMI ontology registry has a big vocabulary database

Can create new vocabularies and map to other known ontologies

Watch the video of the telecon for more information about how this works

Scheduling an informal lunch/coffee meeting at AGU in San Francisco (all)

Scotty added Janet's presentation schedule to his schedule for the meeting -- contact either of them if you want to meet up with them

Janet will send out this message to everyone

Next meeting (2/6/17)

Vasu and Janet talk about engaging sensor manufacturers

11/07/2016

Attendees:
Don Henshaw
Janet Fredericks
Alison Adams
Scotty Strachan
Mike Botts
Mike Dye
Carlos Rueda
Paul Lemieux
Renee Brown
Ethan McMahon

Notes:

Change in leadership

Scotty Strachan to begin co-leading EnviroSensing group with Janet Fredericks

good time to change leadership, Don is retiring soon, time to think about new directions (XDOMES? other projects?)

Matt Bartos (U Michigan) will take over as student fellow (Alison is done at the end of the year)

Discussion of new directions

Don - short recap of history of EnviroSensing cluster and original mission

this is review from previous telecons--see past notes

Janet - update on past year of work on XDOMES

ES group mission and goals is well-aligned with her work, but she needs people to participate rather than just be an audience for the work they're doing

e.g. looking for vocabularies... need this before can go to sensor manufacturers

having difficulty getting people involved -- need folks to participate!

no ES explicit presence (i.e. no specific sessions) at winter meeting, but intend to have a session at summer meeting

Don suggested more explicitly crafting this as a clear opportunity/desire to get people involved

good to tie to specific time frame, task, or event

Send out info prior to telecon, have people look at it and prep something specific, then discuss on telecon

maybe try to target specific people - perhaps folks can help ID who these people would be

follow-up meeting next month to try to get volunteers to describe sensors (spreadsheet?)

plan to have an informal ESIP/EnviroSensing get-together at AGU?

would be great to have a few volunteers, work up to people doing talks at ESIP Summer Meeting?

spend some time together talking about what this is, catching up on the cluster, etc.

Scotty - some thoughts on future directions

excited to step in and help out with the group, since it's been very helpful to expand his data management world

completed PhD over the summer, things are currently a little hectic--transitions, etc.

focus on field designs, esp. on mountain environments

could do multiple projects at once--would be good to stay focused and help the XDOMES project

06/06/2016

Attendees:
Don Henshaw
Janet Fredericks
Alison Adams
Jane Wyngaard
Scotty Strachan
Vasu Kilaru
Wade Sheldon
Mike Botts
Ethan McMahon

Notes:

Janet Fredericks on Q2O web service
Using SWE to bind metadata to observational data - enabling dynamic data quality assessment
Background: NOAA-sponsored project to address data quality in sensor web enablement frameworks

Janet walked participants through the Q2O (QARTOD-to-OGC) web service implementation to demonstrate how web services are used to describe processing, select and describe data and offer it to a user as a service.

OpenSensorHub

open sensor access so that people can discover sensor data, etc.

geolocatable/geospatially aware, fully described data, sensors, and processing

free open source software on github

SmartCity Air Challenge

Ethan: EPA is putting out a challenge called the SmartCityAir challenge: ask communities to tell them how they would deploy a large team of air sensors

provide seed money, etc.

groups have to describe how they would monitor and manage the data, deal with sensors throughout their lifecycle, do this sustainably…

gov’t learning what practices work best

will be announced formally next week; Ethan will send a less formal paragraph out to this group

interested in ideas for how to get word out about this, how to encourage people to use best data management practices that exist

focus is really on the data management side

With XDOMES and OpenSensorHub → trying to get all of that kind of knowledge (how it was used, description of data, etc.) so that you could have people throwing sensors out and have access to that data

Summer meeting:

Janet will be sending out an email about preparing for the workshop at the summer meeting → people can let Janet know that they’re coming

At Thursday session hopefully Janet, Mike, and Vasu will all be presenting

Maybe talk about whether we want to reach out to a broader audience? Janet would like to know how many people plan to attend the workshop

Poster? Don says we did one last year and could just substitute some of the stuff on there with summary points of what we’ve done this year on our calls -- Don will produce the poster if Janet sends summary slides from some of the talks to him

NO call in July -- we’ll just see each other at ESIP! Next call will be in August.

05/02/2016

Attendees:
Don Henshaw (Forest Service in Oregon)
Alison Adams (EnviroSensing Student Fellow)
Annie Burgess (ESIP)
Lindsay Barbieri (Student Fellow)
Carlos Rueda (software engineer at Monterrey, part of XDOMES team)
Corinna Gries (LTER)
Felimon Gayanilo (Texas A&M, XDOMES)
Janet Fredericks (WHOI, XDOMES)
Wade Sheldon (LTER)
Mark Bushnell (oceanographer, XDOMES)
Jane Wyngaard (JPL)

Notes:

Mark Bushnell – Quality Assurance and Quality Control of Real-Time Ocean Data (QARTOD):

QARTOD manuals: focus on real time, usually coastal (http://www.ioos.noaa.gov/qartod)

Includes quality control tests and quality assurance of sensors (in an appendix)

Discussion of operational vs. scientific quality control and different needs/contexts for each

Board meets quarterly to review progress and identify next variables (if you have ideas for variables, let Mark know!)

Each manual takes 6-8 months and each one is a living document that is updated

26 core variables

next up: phytoplankton species!

Discussed an example test from the waves manual

Five “states” for data qc flags (pass, not evaluated, suspect or of high interest, fail, missing data)

Discussion & Questions for Mark:

How to handle flags that represent a mix of semantic notions? Hard for data consumers to understand (what’s the actual problem?)

What about showing (or not showing) data that doesn’t meet a certain standard?

If you’re looking for extreme events, for example, you might want to see all the data…

Helpful to have the option to see all the data (if you’re an operator, say, you might look at failed tests for an instrument)

Best to let the data user select what level of quality they’re interested in

For EnviroSensing, is there a place to save/share code for QC tests?

Not at the moment

Would be good to start tracking/storing code for tests that people do somewhere and have a DOI that describes the processing

python codes for the implementation of the QARTOD recommendations is at https://github.com/ioos/qartod (also look here --> https://github.com/asascience-open/QARTOD)

Core link in email from Janet (body copied below) -- many other pages and additional information can be found from that link

Background: The U.S. Integrated Ocean Observing System® (IOOS) Quality Assurance/Quality Control of Real-Time Oceanographic Data (QARTOD) project has published nine data quality-control manuals since 2012. The manuals are based on U.S. IOOS-selected parameters (or core variables) that are of high importance to ocean observations. The purpose of the manuals is to establish real-time data quality control (QC) procedures for data collection for core variables, such as water levels, currents, waves, and dissolved nutrients. The QC procedures provide guidance to eleven U.S. IOOS Regional Associations and other ocean observing entities, helping data providers and operators to ensure the most accurate real-time data possible. It began as a grass-roots organization over a decade ago - the background can be found on the IOOS QARTOD Project website: http://www.ioos.noaa.gov/qartod/welcome.html

Links from Mark

The link for the flags crosswalk note is http://odv.awi.de/fileadmin/user_upload/odv/misc/ODV4_QualityFlagSets.pdf.

There's similar work at http://www.iode.org/index.php?option=com_oe&task=viewDocumentRecord&docID=10762

Tad Slawecki (tslawecki@limno.com) heads the informal QARTOD Implementation Working Group and posts minutes at https://docs.google.com/document/d/128xPGjTMBP9FC-SEg9vGe8bD145LGdapH21WV5smzn4/edit

In those minutes, he has a USGS github link at https://github.com/USGS-R/sensorQC

04/04/2016

Attendees (small group):
Don Henshaw
Mark
Corinna
Scotty Strachan
Janet Fredericks

Minutes:

Best practices work:

Post a citation suggestion on the introduction page of best practices? Maybe also a snapshot PDF that folks could download with a citation?

People DO go to this page, says Scotty

Mountain Research Institute (MRI) is doing some work trying to write best practices, would be good to try to get them to use ours rather than create something entirely new…

Future of EnviroSensing cluster:

Just need to have one vision at a time--for now we can stay focused on the XDOMES work

Scotty wants to continue to stay involved, promote cluster and its work a bit more to folks after finishing up his PhD (soon!); would be interested in taking lead in cluster after that, too

Future meetings:

Mark will present material on real-time quality control that was planned for this month on the next call instead, due to low attendance on this call

Would be great to reiterate that we didn’t start as ONLY LTER--the best practices doc had input from other folks too--and that that isn’t where we have to stay, either--we can continue to incorporate other things/groups

Janet will talk about summer meeting workshop plans on June call: registering vocabulary

will be a good workshop for beginners/people who need to be introduced to the concept

Summer meeting (July): have a 1.5-hour session for EnviroSensing--should email asking for folks to present

03/07/2016

Attendees:
Alison Adams
Don Henshaw
Janet Fredericks
John Porter
Felimon Gayanilo
Krzysztof Janowicz
Carlos Rueda
Peter Murdoch
Vasu Kilaru
Scotty Strachan
Corinna Gries
Ethan McMahon

Minutes:

1. Future meeting ideas (Don)

Revisit best practices--have folks present the chapters they did and rekindle interest; Scotty said he’d be willing to do this for his chapter

Email Alison at alison.adams@uvm.edu if you have ideas for future telecons!

2. Summer meeting -- session/workshop ideas? (proposals due at beginning of April)

XDOMES workshop: connected to EnviroSensing cluster?

sensor provenance EnviroSensing breakout session?

Janet to lead more hands-on workshop on Semantic Web, etc.?

Let Alison, Don, or Janet know if you have additional ideas

3. Update on work plan draft (Don & Janet)

Conversation with Erin last week

If you might like to be the next leader, let Don know--thinking of having an “on deck” leader position

Interest in AGU Geospace blog? Lots on data use, etc. This could be a place to put out info about our cluster

4. Rotating chair position for Products & Services (Alison)

Right now, Products & Services does three things: (1) FUNding Friday, (2) the P&S Testbed, and (3) tech evaluation process with NASA AIST to evaluate AIST-funded projects. Also working on an evaluation process for the projects funded through the testbed, and would hopefully provide this to the Earth science community at large eventually.

P&S wants to have a rotating co-chair position; would last for three months and would be a rep from a different committee. The first co-chair (starting in April) wouldn’t be involved in proposal evaluation/selection, but would be involved in ideas for student/PI matchmaking and mentoring for FUNding Friday and the evaluation and testbed activities. It would be a great opportunity to learn more about P&S and have them more about us. It wouldn’t prevent you from submitting a proposal to the testbed.

If you’re interested, email Soren at sorenscott@gmail.com; you can sign up for the rotating co-chair position here

5. XDOMES team on Semantic Web (Krzysztof Janowicz)

Full recording with slides available in recorded meeting

Semantic technologies can improve semantic interoperability

More intelligent metadata, more efficient discovery, use, reproducibility of data; reduce misinterpretation and meet data requirements of journals, etc.

Large community in science, gov’t, industry; many open source and commercial tolls and infrastructures; there are existing ontologies and huge amounts of interlinked data

Move the logic OUT of software and INTO the data

Semantic technologies support horizontal as well as vertical workflows

Semantic interoperability can only be measured after the fact bc meaning is an emergent property of interaction; come up with technologies that prevent data that shouldn’t be combined from being combined

Discussion:

How much of this is already in use or is this just setting up the platform at this point?

With XDOMES we are at an early stage, but in terms of the infrastructure, a lot of it is already productively used

02/02/2016

Attendees:
Bar (Lindsay Barbieri) - Data Analytics Student Fellow
Corinna Gries (North Temperate Lakes LTR site)
Janet Fredericks (Woods Hole, managing coastal observatory and leading XDOMES project)
Vasu Kilaru (EPA Office of Research and Development)
Josh Cole (UMBC Data Manager -- interested in hearing about XDOMES)
Scotty Strachan (Geography Dept at University Nevada Reno, current PhD student)
Pete Murdoch (Science Advisor for NE Region of USGS, also working with DOI)
Ethan McMahon (EPA Office of Environmental Information)
Renee Brown (Univ of New Mexico, Sevilleta LTER and Field Station)
Jane Wyngaard (Post-doc at JPL)
Don Henshaw (Forest Service PNW Research Station)

Notes drafted by Alison Adams (EnviroSensing Student Fellow) according to meeting recording

On the agenda:
Janet on XDOMES
What should EnviroSensing cluster do?

---

XDOMES (Cross-Domain Observational Metadata Environmental Sensing Network) NSF project funded as part of EarthCube

• cross-domain observational metadata
• focusing on: sensor metadata creation, data quality assessment, sensor interoperability, automated metadata generation, content management
• 4 types of work (funded for two years)
  • software development to create Sensor ML Generators and registries for semantic techs and Sensor ML documents
  • Trying to engage people like this community, sensor manufacturers to create a network of people interested in promoting adoption of sensor ML techs
  • Useability assessment
  • Integration of semantic interoperability
• this project is about capturing metadata at the time of CREATION of the data
• GOAL: put out metadata automatically in interoperable ways (community-adopted, standards-based framework)
• use of registered terms to enable interoperability
• can also help manage operations by providing standardized information about how sensors were configured, etc.
• want to develop community within ESIP who will follow and promote this approach
  • vet, look at usability assessment, what do you want us to do and is it useful to you?

Discussion

• Vasu says this is related to things EPA has been working on--excited to continue the conversation
• Jane asked about communication with sensor-creators so this can be implemented in new sensors; Janet said that isn’t part of the project at this point
• Potential application for folks with Alliance for Coastal Technologies--they work on sensor validation and I think it’s a slightly different take, but this is definitely something they could benefit from (like if we start describing our sensors in a way that the information can be harvested)
• If people are interested you can see what Janet is putting in the file and think about whether this would be helpful or useful or whether she’s missing something; would you be willing to test this in your own environment?
• Delivering data is kind of beyond the scope of the XDOMES project at this point
• Vision: info is out on the web, and you have an app to go and harvest the information that you need
• Do we want to work this pilot project into public presence in this cluster?

Future WebEx ideas

• Could do a WebEx on how water ML, sensor ML, etc. fit together
• Janet is approaching Krzysztof Janowicz to discuss sensors and semantics with us on the March call

06/22/2015

Today we had Dave Johnson from LiCOR Environmental speak with us about eddy covariance. We had a large group of attendees.

Dave shared with us links to the LiCOR software [1] and a book [2]

• The problem they are solving is that the data coming in with eddy covariance is high resolution and large, more than 300 million records per year.

• They were able to put much of the processing and QC logic into the SMART system, which is on the instruments in the field.

• An eddy covariance system can "see" about 100 x its height above the canopy.

• We were interested in the possibilities for real-time data qc, and also how the information can be transferred between the instruments in the field (i.e. cell modem, line, etc.)

02/24/2015

Today we had William Jeffries from Heat Seek NYC talk to us about his platform for civilian monitoring of home temperatures in apartments using low-cost sensors and wireless mesh networks taking hourly readings.

Attending the call were Fox and Don from Andrews, Josh at UM, Jason in Fairbanks, Becky from Onset, Ryan from UT and Scotty from UNV as well as some listen-in callers.

• Heat seek NYC has nodes containing up to 1000 low-power, low-cost thermometers which are mapped to custom printed circuit boards. The software stack is Ruby on Rails with a Post-Gres backend.

• HSNYC focuses on sensor network's ability to affect and effect policy, and so far has seen that the government views sensor networks as a cool solution to a lot of difficult regulatory challenges. They provide reliable information that officials and citizens can use with printable, court-friendly PDF's.

• Funding is by kickstarter and was started by the NYC Big Apps campaign, a giant Civic Hacking Competition.

• They have been incorporated as a non profit in NY since 2014

• First sensors were Twine Sensors off the shelf temperature sensors; not so good

stale data

• Now they make their own temperature sensors, using a push system instead of a pull system. (if there's a problem with the system just don't get pull out of it.)

• We asked about LCD and the reason for not implementing is that many tenants aren't actually as interested in the data as the response from the policy makers

• Some people will abuse the system so they use tamper evident tape and photos of installation to protect ; landlords have financial incentives and there can be intentional lack of repairs

• Local cache-ing of the sensor occurs; sensors cache at the hub, relay server that sends back

• There are several levels of caching, and also well as flash memory on the XP radios

• A key question was is there a long-term storage that is a local cache? We don't have a solution either

• We had interest in a company called H20degree

• For QC they do indoor and outdoor temperature comparison, comparing the sensors to one another and to store bought sensors before and after installation...

• Frequency for radios/caching is hourly waking up point data

• We are all interested in a low-or-no power source/ transmitter, maybe based on raspberri pi
• need a high peak power envelope-- transmission needs to deal with being fairly far apart... implementation needs to come online and transmit an awesome signal for a short time and go back to sleep.

Note on Webex recording: I am going to check into the recording- my system claims to have been recording but it is nowhere to be found (Fox)

01/27/2015

Rick Susfalk from the Desert Research Institute presented about Acuity Data Portal. Notes from meeting taken by Fox Peterson, please edit as you see fit.

We had in attendance 8 persons.

Acuity Portal System

• Started in 2006
• originally VDV data solution
• improvements to web-interface; sits on top of VDV as Acuity server
• Acuity is a continuous monitoring of key client-driven data
• it includes sensors and data logging deployment and maintenance, telemetry, data storage and analysis, automated airing, web portal for data access
• individualized web presence tailored to client needs
• not a single tool, but instead integrates commercial, open source, and proprietary hardware and tools
• customizable project specific descriptions
• common tools used to provide rapid, cost-effective deployment of individualized portals
• physical infrastructure is shared amongst smaller clients for cost-saving or it can be segregated for larger clients.
• access is controlled down to the variable level-- "we can define who gets to see what"-- for example, public can not see some features
• one view could be "pre-defined graphs" without logging in, but if you want to download the data you must log in at your permissions level

SECURITY

• priority, very important
• DOD certification and accredidation (possible link below)
• http://www.dtic.mil/whs/directives/corres/pdf/832002p.pdf
• have hired a security professional
• https:// everywhere for good protocol

ANALYSIS

• customized thresholding and data-freshness
• trending alerts, for example, know if battery will go bad
• stochastic and numerical modeling
• scoring incoming data for QA/QC processing

QA/QC tools

• web-based GUI
• users and managers can create, edit, and modify alerts online
• groups can be created so that you can schedule management and alerts
• also offers localized redundant alerting
• two-way communication with the campbell data loggers (cr1000)
• more about getting the data to the data managers for more in-depth QA/QC than about providing that part of the tooling

Data graphing features

• Pre-determined graphs for basic users
• Data selector for more advanced users
• "we don't know what the users want to see so we give them the tools to do it" (good idea!)
• anything you can change in Excel you can change in their graphs on the website -

Links

• vista data vision (http://www.vistadatavision.com/)
• another vdv link: (http://www.vistadatavision.com/features/responsive/)

Metadata

• relates your parameters to the network and what other sensors are doing
• current system is getting more flexible
• metadata is still largely user responsibility

Flight plan - safety tool

• field personnel are data
• users put in the travel time for safety
• buddy system, alerted right before you return, then calls boss etc. Many levels hierarchy

Demos

• Portals that are monitoring things
• ability for data refreshment
• colors for indication, ex., data would not be gray if there was lots of new data
• users can change the settings on the data logger
• scrolling, scaling, plotting, etc. via interaction with the user
• can save your own graphs

graphs and alerts

• many parameters
• you can save!
• email, sms, phone
• default settings for users
• lots of personnel management tools in this in general
• cross-station "truly alarm or not" if station1 has a value but station2 has a different one, don't alarm sorts of rules
• lists/user groups appear to be very important with this tool
• sensor and triggers: customize one or more parameters that you are bringing into your database

real-time updates on loggers

• ex. 10 minute data, user comes in and makes a change, the information is saved to the database and then is presented to all other users
• the person will request a change and say what that change is
• when there are different levels of connectivity ie. analog phone modems, before the data has the chance to work its way back into the system there is a lot of validation being done

example

• https://l30l31.dri.edu/
• everglades heat pulse flow meters
• uses google maps

measurements/metadata

• extends beyond the vdv, more than 1 .dat file
• integrate multiple .dat into many tables
• managed by the data managers at DRI
• workflow :

logger net --> vdv --> acuity, ok, let's give access to the DM for all these variables, click on it ok now the manager can see it --> generate an excel file with tables for all this metadata --> enter the data into the excel files--> send back to acuity --> injests, runs queries, back to db-- > metadata in bulk, quickly

• we asked if the system ends before the qa/qc process begins, answer: qa/qc is done at the DRI, near real time QA though

future capability

• direct the managers to the future data problems
• manual decision making

Scotty asked about the duration (long and short term) of projects and how affects funding. most is funded by long-term projects; this is why they do the stats and numerical methods in the future

Amber asked about pricing; pricing is by hour to get up, then a price for maintaining the system for the duration of the project 5-10 .dat files, only 8 hours of person time at DRI to make a portal

11/25/2014

Jordan Read presented the SensorQC R package

Recorded Session Play | Download

10/28/2014

Wade Sheldon presented the GCE Data Toolbox – a short summary follows:

• Community-oriented environmental software package
• Lightweight, portable, file-based data management system implemented in MATLAB
• generalized technical analysis framework, useful for automatic processing, and it's a good compromise using either programmed-in or file-based operations
• Generalized tabular data model
• Metadata, data, robust API, GUI library, support files, MATLAB databases
• Benefits and costs: platform independent, sharing both code and data seamlessly across the systems, version independent as far as MATLAB goes, and is now "free and open source" software. There is a growing community of users in LTER.

Toolbox data model

---

• Data model is meant to be a self-describing environmental data set-- the metadata is associated with the data, create date and edit date and such are maintained, and its lineage.
• Quality control criteria- can apply custom function or one already in the toolbox
• Data arrays, corresponding arrays of qualifier flags -- similar to a relational database table but with more associated metadata

Toolbox function library

---

• The software library is referred to as a "toolbox"
• a growing level of analytical functions, transformations, aggregation tools
• GUI functions to simplify the usage
• indexing and search support tools, and data harvest management tools
• Command line API but there is also a large and growing set of graphical form interfaces and you can start the toolbox without even using the command line

Data management framework

---

• Data management cycle - designed to help an LTER site do all of its data management tasks
• Data and metadata can be imported into the framework and a very mature set of predefined import filters exist: csv, space- and tab-delimited and generic parsers. Also, specialized parsers are available for Sea-Bird CTD, sondes, Campbell, Hobo, Schlumberger, OSIL, etc.
• Live connections i.e. Data Turbine, ClimDB, SQL DB's, access to the MATLAB data toolbox
• Can import data from NWIS, NOAA, NCDC, etc.
• Can set evaluation rules, conditions, evaluations, etc.
• Automated QC on import but can do interactive analysis and revision
• All steps are automatically documented, so you can generate an anomalies report by variable and date range which lets you communicate more to the users of the data

Recorded Session Play | Download

9/23/2014

• Fox Peterson (Andrews LTER) reported on QA/QC methods they are applying to historic climate records (~13 million data points for each of 6 sites).

The challenge was that most automated approaches still produced too many flagged data that needed to be manually checked. Multiple statistical methods were tested based on long-term historical data. The method they selected was to use a moving window of data from the same hour over 30 days and test for 4 standard deviations in that window; E.g., use all data for 1 pm for days 30 - 60 of the year, compute four standard deviations, and set the range for the midpoint day (45) at the 1pm hour to that range.

• Josh Cole reported on his system, which is in development and he will be able to share scripts with the group.
• Brief discussion of displaying results using web tools.
• Great Basin site discussed the variability in their data, which "has no normal"-- how could we perform qa/qc based on statistics and ranges in this case?
• Discussion of bringing Wade Sheldon to call next time / usefulness of the toolbox for data managers
• Discussion of using Pandas package- does anyone have experience, can we get them on?
• Discussion of the trade off between large data stores, computational strength, and power. Good solutions?
• ESIP email had some student opportunities which may be of interest
• Overall, it was considered helpful if people were willing to share scripts. Discussion of a GIT repository for the group, or possibly just use the Wiki.

Recorded Session: Play | Download

8/26/2014

Suggestions for future discussion topics

• Citizen Science contributions to environmental monitoring
• 'open' sensors - non-commercial sensors made in-house, technology, use, best practices
• Latest sensor technologies
• Efficient data processing approaches
• Online data visualizations
• New collaborations to develop new algorithms for better data processing
• Sensor system management tools (communicating field events and associating them with data)

Recorded session: Play | Download