Winter Meeting 2011 - Session Abstracts

CECWG

The ESIP Education committee is forming a Climate Change Education Working Group (CCEWG) to support member’s climate education initiatives. The Working Group will commence with a 90 minute panel-led town hall meeting featuring experts from several ESIP member organizations, including but not limited to NASA, NOAA, GLOBE, EPA, NSF, CLN and GLOBE. This will be followed by a group discussion to establish common ground. After the break we'll reconvene to set a course of action for 2011.

• Needs Telecon/Projector

Discovery Cluster

The set of ESIP Discovery web services encompass the overlapping conventions of Earth science data-oriented OpenSearch, Data-Collection Casting, Data-Granule Casting, and Service Casting feed standards. With multiple distributed Earth science data systems already implementing these casting standards, a need has arisen to develop interoperable and community-driven conventions. We will cover interoperability use cases, setup a governance process for moving forward, discuss key issues, and settle on an initial ESIP Discovery Cast Response format.

GCMD

NASA's Global Change Master Directory (GCMD) enables users to discover and access data, services, and climate visualizations relevant to global change and Earth science research. In this session, participants will learn about the value of metadata and the GCMD for discovering Earth science data, services, and visualizations. In addition, data and services from ESIP members will be highlighted in the updated ESIP portal. A "hands-on" demonstration of our metadata authoring tool will be given and participants will have the opportunity to use the tool for describing their data, services, and visualizations.

ESIP 101

The ESIP Federation has grown its membership during the past several years and has evolved its activities during the same time. For those new to the ESIP Federation or anyone interested in learning more about its activities, join us for an overview presentation that will highlight the history, current activities, opportunities for involvement and how to become a partner. Session leader: Carol Meyer, Jim Frew

Air Quality

The Air Quality Workgroup breakout session will provide brief updates from multiple air quality related projects along with three in-depth discussions. The brief project updates from efforts across the community will focus on advances in interoperability as well as any work in evaluating and maximizing the impact of data in research and decision support. Three in-depth discussion topics are planned:

• Air Quality Cyberinfrastructure Recommendations Review - from the EPA CyAir project
• GEOSS Mid-Term Evaluation and Review
• GEOSS Air Quality Community of Practice Planning

Energy/AQ

The Energy Cluster will have two break-out sessions focusing on (a) Climate and Energy Policy and User Requirements, and (b) Data, Models and Decision Support Solutions. Another session will be held jointly with Air Quality to discuss future activities leveraging lessons learned from past successes, identifying current needs, and brainstorming potential projects. On the first day, the Policy and User requirements session will include presentations on energy requirements and climate change impact on military installations, DOE’s Bio Mass program, and technology transfer and cross-agency data sharing. The Solutions session on the second day will provide presentations from NOAA on Climate Services support to the Energy and Water sectors and from NASA on assessing the utility of Earth observation measurements informing energy sector applications. This will be followed by advances in GFDL and availability of high resolution global climate model data for analysis, uncertainty quantification for assessments of energy impacts, and wind forecasting for power generation.

IT&I

Part 1: Business Meeting

IT&I Plans for 2011:

• Rant and Rave Webinar Feedback
• Speaker/Topics Line up
• Online Technology Tutorials
• Semi-structured publishing status and current plans
• Interoperability, technology demonstration projects

Part 2: Earth Science Collaboratory

Discussion led by Chris Lynnes, Kevin Murphy

We will present a proposed evolutionary path toward a coherent, collaborative framework of Earth science information, data, tools, services and workflows

Semantic Web

This 6 hr session presented over two half-days is intended to provide both the novice/ beginner/ manager and those already familiar with semantic web technologies in the context of an end-to-end application example. Material to be covered includes: Motivation and use case development. Use case analysis and model/ ontology development, technology and infrastructure options and methods for choosing. implementation and simple application development, user testing and discussion.

Decisions

Interventions and programs are implemented within complex environments that present challenges in evaluating efficiency and effectiveness and attributing outcomes and impact to specific actions. A general problem in evaluation efforts — and what often causes them to fall short of their intended objectives — is the failure to fully articulate a theory of change that includes the identification of critical mechanisms that support optimal outcomes; to select measureable objectives that are actionable, meaning that they are linked to practices that an organization can actually do something about; to incorporate diverse stakeholders including end-users; to craft the evaluation in terms of its role in data-driven decision-making; and, lastly to effectively communicate the return on investment in terms of not only cost, but human and social capital.

This workshop will provide an interactive opportunity for participants to become more familiar with effective evaluation approaches that include a focus on crafting a theory of change that characterizes the outcome goal(s) and impact as well as identifying the mechanisms of change – moving from activity to results. Matching evaluation levels with the objectives to be achieved (e.g., linking gap analysis with theory of change, etc.) will be addressed, as well as optimizing the actionability of evaluation efforts. The workshop will examine performance measurement strategies that support actionable data. Data based decision-making, value-based issues, and practice-based evidence related to evaluation and monitoring (M & E) activities (process, outcome, and impact) will be emphasized. A case study approach, focusing on the work of the Group on Earth Observations will be used as an illustrative example of how members of the Federation of Earth Science Information Partners can better use evaluation tools to achieve outcomes and to optimize the impact of their work.

Doc Consortium

Everyone knows that keeping up with changes in technology is difficult, particularly when a new technology makes current capabilities obsolete. Systems that have developed and evolved over the years are stressed by new demands and drivers. People with proven expertise resist adoption of new approaches. These challenges are exacerbated by the fact that the way ahead is generally hazy. Uncertainty about the best approach can lead to costly dead-ends and even successful projects run the risk of eventual failure because of unforeseen twists in the adoption process.

This period of high uncertainty and risk is termed the “Era of Ferment”. It is a particularly bad time for interoperability, as groups go their own way in attempts to define “the way”. Pressure to meet deadlines makes custom solutions attractive and, in the end, even small initial differences develop into chasms that make sharing data and results expensive and time consuming.

We are on the threshold of an Era of Ferment initiated by the emergence and adoption of new ISO standards for documenting observations, products, and services. These standards significantly extend the breadth of previous standards and make it possible to address pressing challenges in transparency, understanding and preservation. Recognition of these benefits has driven many organizations to adopt these standards, but they now face the uncertainties and risks associated with the transition.

It is clearly important to escape this Era of Ferment as soon as possible. This session initiates progress towards that goal with ESIP members who understand that identifying common approaches and conventions is critical. We need to minimize risk and uncertainty and grow a community of practice aimed at creating and sharing high-quality data, products and services that are documented for understanding across disciplinary and national boundaries now and in the future. ESIP is clearly a great place to start!

Data Preservation

Citation Guidelines and Identifiers

Citation and reproducibility are key concepts underpinning the science enterprise. Given that data have become central to the scientific process in many fields, the ability to cite data in a uniform manner is becoming increasingly important. For these reasons, the Stewardship and Preservation cluster of the ESIP federation has agreed to work on citation recommendations for both data providers and data users over the upcoming year. One of the core issues for citation is data identification, a topic that the cluster has addressed through its identifier assessment and testbed activities. In this session, the status of current data citation practice is reviewed, an update of cluster activities will be given, and a work plan for moving forward over the next year in these areas will be developed.

Towards an Earth Science Provenance and Context content standard sessions

During the first session in this two part track, existing guidance on what information needs to be kept in order to ensure usability and trustability of Earth Science data will be described and discussed. John Moses of NASA will also describe the reality as compared to this guidance as it applies to several NASA missions. Given this background, the remainder of these sessions will be dedicated to developing an action plan for the Preservation and Stewardship cluster to move forward with the development of a content standard for Earth Science provenance and context.

Towards an Earth Science Provenance and Context ontology sessions

During the first session in this two part track, an overview of the leading provenance ontologies will be given, the gaps in these ontologies for Earth Sciences reviewed, and a number of pre-existing use cases discussed. Over the course of the session, additional use cases will be developed and a plan or roadmap for developing an Earth Science specific Provenance/Context Ontology within the cluster will be developed.

Cluster business meeting

The cluster will hold its annual officer election and flesh out its work plan for the next year based on the results of the previous sessions and a discussion of the existing testbed activities.

MENDS

NASA ESDIS has formed a team of data systems and metadata experts to analyze requirements and recommend the best approach for NASA Earth Science data systems to align with the international metadata standard ISO 19115. The team considered the applicability, limitations, and possible profiles of this standard for the diverse data sets maintained by NASA data centers and missions. The team’s initial findings and recommendations regarding to how reach the interoperability goals of NASA using these standards will be discussed. We are also pleased to have David Danko, lead of the Project Team revising the ISO 19115 standard, attending the session. He will describe the current status of the revision process and discuss applications of ISO 19115 to data quality and lineage metadata.

Cloud Computing

Many Earth science problems cannot be explored by single computers and solved within a single science community, but through distributed computing paradigms and models interdisciplinary efforts, such problems can be tackled effectively. The emergence of cloud computing provides a potential solution to enable the addressing of the Earth science problems. This session provides the latest development on how cloud computing can help Earth sciences and how Earth sciences can help to shape cloud computing? This session will include three talks and one discussion:

1) Doug Nebert from FGDC will introduce GeoCloud, a cross-agency initiative led by FGDC. In early 2010, FGDC summoned government agencies such as Census, NOAA, USGS, and USDA to deploy their geospatial products and applications onto a cloud environment. Objectives of this initiative are to define common operating system and software suites for geospatial applications, explore and document deployment and management strategies, monitor usage and costing of Cloud services in an operational environment, and pursue shared system security profiles for such solutions. The result of the project will serve as an guidance for governmental agencies in the future when considering Cloud service adoption for geospatial capabilities.

2) Qunying Huang from George Mason University Center for Intelligent Spatial Computing will introduce a joint project between the GeoCloud and GEO from their experiences on deploying the GEOSS clearinghouse to a cloud platform. The deployment of geospatial applications onto Amazon EC2 cloud computing platform will be introduced. Issues and Research will be reported about the leverage of cloud computing for the operational system.

3) Chaowei Phil Yang, the lead architect of NASA cloud services hosted by Goddard Space Flight Center, will introduce the NASA Cloud Services. 4) A discussion is arranged to discuss the question "how cloud computing can help geospatial sciences and how geospatial sciences can help to shape cloud computing".

Level 2 Data Search and Subset Tools

Finding and extracting Level 2 (swath) data of interest can be a lengthy endeavor for a scientist or data end-user. Depending on the actual data involved, there can be many hurdles to cross over before a user can get at the data they are interested in. Searching for the data presents the first challenge, as many swath data products are not easily identified by region of interest, and there may be additional search criteria the user would like to impose to filter out unwanted data. Extracting swath data is the second challenge, as there tends to be a lot of variation among data sets, and some expert knowledge can be required of the user in order to properly extract the data of interest. Tools that aid users of the data in searching for and extracting Level 2 (swath) data will be presented and discussed.

ESIP Testbed

The ESIP Products and Services Committee is establishing a Testbed to explore various standards, protocols, best practices, and technologies. The initial content for the Testbed include: i) expert skills, ii) unique object identifiers, iii) semantic web technologies, and iv) web portals. This session will discuss progress, strategies, and future opportunities for the Testbed.