Summer 2010 Technical Workshops

Updated: 05/21/2010 Rahul Ramachandran

Workshop Abstract Proposal Template (Need Feedback)

   * Description:
   * Audience:
   * Workshop Category Type:
         o Working meetings – working meeting that are set up more like tutorials with hands on participation
         o Presentation track
   * Special requirements:
         o Room Configuration Requirements
         o Equipment requirements
   * Proposed Time Length (90 Minutes max):

Suggested Workshops

Data Visualization Boot Camp

   * Focus: Follow on from last summer’s meeting
   * Workshop lead: Bruce Caron

Abstract: Many ESIP partners process datasets into visualizations for scientific investigation or as information for end users. Using better practices in data visualization will lead to more effective science and communication. The ESIP Summer meetings are a good place for earth data visualizers to share their successful practices and to build a set of best practice models for earth data visualizations. This workshop will bring together top data visualizers from several ESIPs, and others looking to learn more about visualization tools and techniques. The goal is to start a visualization resource that can grow over time to become an educational tool for Federation and the larger earth science data community.

Semantic Web Workshop

   * Semantic Web - Three part presentation 
   * Peter Fox, Rahul Ramachandran, Hook Hua

Lecture 1: Practical aspects of creating semantic web applications by Peter Fox

This part of the workshop is targeted at audience that spans the mid-advanced beginner to intermediate level interested in what an initial end-to-end prototype implementation of a semantic web application would consist of. The presentation will start with a use case, decompose it along with needed vocabularies, and relationships, perform the initial modeling, reuse and engineering steps for the ontology, using tools such as Cmap and Protege and proceed to instance generation, ontology validation and verification, prototyping triple store, query and programming language and inference choices that may need to be made. The participant should come away with the general method and suitable initial prototyping choices that can be made when starting semantic web applications so that long development cycles are minimized.

Lecture 2: Building a Linked Data Cloud for Earth Science by Rahul Ramachandran

Semantic Web isn’t just about putting data on the web. It is about making links so that a person or machine can explore the web of data. With linked data, when you have some of it, you can find other, related data" - Tim Berners-Lee.

This presentation will look at what is linked data? How to publish and consume data in this cloud? Some existing examples and research applications will be presented. Finally, this presentation will focus on Earth Science specific issues related to Linked Data such as existing technology components and hurdles.

Lecture 3: Semantic Web Technologies for Addressing Knowledge Gaps in Using Science Applications by Hook Hua

Many science data processing suites have grown in complexity where no single person may fully understand all aspects of the system. Developed over the course of years (or decades) and by many groups of people, these processing software often encompass a plethora of processing steps and data products. We will present an overview of various semantically-driven technologies and techniques that can address this knowledge gap issue in the scope of InSAR data processing. We will cover ontology development and how it can be applied with inferencing, rules, query, and natural language processing to help the non-expert users.

Collaborative Technologies and Geoportal Extension

   * Exposing Data with Web Services
   * Workshop Lead: Christine Eggers ESRI

Abstract:

It is no secret that exposing geospatial datasets as web services makes them easier for users to discover and use. Web services allow users to access and then combine different datasets for their own purposes and in their own map viewers, often in creative ways. Even so, the standards, organizational policies, and technical aspects of how to move datasets to web services can be daunting. This workshop investigates the value of web services, how to expose datasets as standards-based web services, and tools that enable users to discover web-accessible data resources.

Intended Audience: All, particularly organizations that produce or manage geospatial datasets.

Federated Search

   * ESIP's Federated Search
   * Workshop lead: Chris Lynnes
   * Agenda

Abstract:

ESIP's Federated Search cluster is developing a framework to support space-time and keyword search for data. The aim is to include both small and large data providers, both data and services (eventually), and both dataset and file-level searches. The approach is to leverage the OpenSearch standard, layering an ESIP-specific convention on top.

This workshop will include:

• an introduction and demos of existing Federated Search implementations (yes, they exist!)
• work on details of the ESIP convention and how to foster client and server development

Intended Audience: Both Federated Search newbies (esp. for the first half) and Federated Search cluster members (second half). Newbies are welcome to watch some of the sausage-making in the second half.

Workshop Category: Presentation Track.

Interoperability 101

   * Focus: Survey course for new members to introduce different interoperability standards
   * Workshop lead: Karl Bennedict

Abstract:

This workshop will provide an overview of key interoperability standards and protocols that are important in Earth science data and information exchange and data processing. The standards discussed in the workshop will include the following:

• Open Geospatial Consortium: Web Map, Web Feature, and Web Coverage Services (WMS, WFS, and WCS respectively), Catalog Services for Web (CSW), and Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) suite of standards (Karl Benedict)

• OpenDAP for scientific data networking (Chris Lynnes)

• Pomegranate as an example of a Restful Web Service platform for accessing remote data (Zhangfan Xing)

Climate Modeling

   * Focus: The use of climate models
   * Workshop lead: Rob Raskin to recruit from ORNL

Drupal in a Day

   * Workshop lead: Sunil Movva, Jerry Pan and Giri Palanisamy
   * Part 1: Learn the basics
   * Part 2: Earth Science customizations

Service & Data Casting

   * Workshop lead:  Brian Wilson
   * Short presentations/demos and working discussion

Abstract:

Discussion of how to advertise web services, datasets, and data granules using service, dataset, and granule casts (RSS or Atom feeds). Brian will present on service casting, and Ruth Duerr will demo some dataset casting. Multiple groups are doing this kind of casting, so we will discuss intended uses, how to agree on these formats (use of georss and other metadata tags), and coordinate efforts to minimize redundant work.

Intended audience:

Anyone interested in publishing lightweight, searchable metadata for services and datasets in these 'casting' formats.