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| − | Air Quality Data Summit
| + | ===Purpose=== |
| − | Office of Air Quality Planning and Standards
| + | Bring together those organizations and individuals with key roles in retrieving, storing, disseminating and analyzing air quality data in order to explore efficient means of leveraging the numerous operations underway, and to assist EPA/OAQPS in defining its role in the larger air quality data community. The assumption is built off of existing systems for most efficient operation and not to develop from scratch a new infrastructure. |
| − | U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
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| − | Research Triangle Park, NC 27711
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| − | Conference Room C113
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| − | February 12 – 13, 2008
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| − | Purpose: Bring together those organizations and individuals with key roles in retrieving, storing, disseminating and analyzing air quality data in order to explore efficient means of leveraging the numerous operations underway, and to assist EPA/OAQPS in defining its role in the larger air quality data community.
| + | ===Objectives=== |
| | + | # Develop an understanding of various, related air quality data processing programs/systems. |
| | + | # Based on 1, consider developing a community-wide strategy that enhances communications across these systems by identifying efficiencies, minimizing redundancies, and addressing user defined needs. |
| | + | # Provide guidance to EPA/OAQPS regarding the role of AirQuest and other information systems to work interactively with these systems and to service broader community needs. |
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| − | Objectives:
| + | ===Motivation=== |
| | + | Note: This meeting is being driven by a number of events and discussions over the last five years that include: |
| | + | * perceived frustration and/or misunderstanding in accessing EPA data bases, |
| | + | * development of user friendly air quality data processing tools by Regional Planning Organizations (RPOs), the Health Effects Institute (HEI) and other organizations |
| | + | * enhanced emphasis on inter agency collaboration through venues such as GEOSS |
| | + | * elevated interest in using disparate sources of air quality observations (e.g., surface and satellite data), emissions and model results in conducting assessments |
| | + | * Recognition of incorporating multiple spatial scales, and therefore a variety of information sources, to address increasing importance of hemispheric transport and climate-air quality interactions, and |
| | + | * Recommendations from EPA’s Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee’s subcommittee on monitoring encouraging EPA to foster greater access and analysis of air quality data bases. |
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| − | 1. Develop an understanding of various, related air quality data processing programs/systems.
| + | One of the objectives of the meeting is to inform investments by EPA under the Advanced Monitoring Initiative. AMI began in FY06 to demonstrate the potential of a Global Earth Observations System of System. In FY06 and FY07, a series of pilot projects were funded. For FY08, the funding has been allocated to four integrative themes: air quality, water quality, land use/multi-media, and information technology. The current proposal for the FY08 air theme is found here, |
| − | 2. Based on 1, consider developing a community-wide strategy that enhances communications across these systems by identifying efficiencies, minimizing redundancies, and addressing user defined needs.
| + | http://wiki.esipfed.org/index.php/Image:EPA_GEO_Air_Theme_Expanded_Proposal_b.doc This proposal calls for the development of three "operational use cases" (operational systems that support data access, integration, analysis, and visualization for specific decision making contexts) in the areas of model evaluation and intercomparison, air quality "re-analysis," and emission inventories. Input from the Summit will help to refine this proposal and develop a specific plan for spending the FY08 funds. - Terry Keating |
| − | 3. Provide guidance to EPA/OAQPS regarding the role of AirQuest to work interactively with these systems and to service broader community needs.
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| − | [Note: This meeting is being driven by a number of events and discussions over the last five years that include: | + | ==[[Breakout_Sessions:_Objectives_%26_Questions| Breakout Sessions]] == |
| − | • perceived frustration and/or misunderstanding in accessing EPA data bases,
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| − | • development of user friendly air quality data processing tools by Regional Planning Organizations (RPOs), the Health Effects Institute (HEI) and other organizations
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| − | • enhanced emphasis on inter agency collaboration through venues such as GEOSS
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| − | • elevated interest in using disparate sources of air quality observations (e.g., surface and satellite data), emissions and model results in conducting assessments
| |
| − | • Recognition of incorporating multiple spatial scales, and therefore a variety of information sources, to address increasing importance of hemispheric transport and climate-air quality interactions, and
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| − | • Recommendations from EPA’s Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee’s subcommittee on monitoring encouraging EPA to foster greater access and analysis of air quality data bases.]
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| − | Agenda design: The first half of the morning is intended provide brief overviews of existing data bases (e.g., AQS and NASA DAACS) with the latter [art of the morning session covering the principle topic area: data base access and integration systems that have some post processing capabilities (e.g., VIEWS, DataFed). Assuming a basic inventory of what is available has been addressed in the morning, the afternoon session is broken into two parallel sessions addressing Information Technology (IT) issues and user needs. The IT breakout is charged with providing recommendations that facilitate data sharing and data manipulation, with specific attention given to EPA systems to both receive and disseminate data. [note, we need to be careful here as we do not want to convey the idea that EPA is willing to start with a clean slate. The existing systems are our infrastructure and we really are talking about how we these systems fit into a broader community.] The analysis breakout group is charged with providing basic recommendations on what data elements should be accessible, what types of data manipulations should be performed and what type of geospatial and graphical postprocessing capability is expected. [note: It is expected that routine data query capability by space, time and compositional attributes will be available to produce tables and maps of such queries comparable to existing VIEWS, HEI and CASTNET data systems.] Both breakout sessions will be populated by a mix of IT and data analyst specialists. The second day is dedicated to reporting out recommendations from the breakout sessions, soliciting group-wide input and modification of those recommendations and developing a “next steps” plan based on the meeting outcome. Realistically, we are using this meeting as an exploratory tool and are hesitant to suggest any potential outcomes at this time.
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| − | Guidance for presentations:
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| − | Provide concise descriptions of purpose, scope, intended users, constraints, illustrative examples and projected development items. These are to be cast as information pieces and not as marketing opportunities.
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| − | Breakout session questions. | |
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| − | What challenges in data formatting conventions, software constraints, and security policy do EPA systems face in participating in a broader data sharing community, and what viable solutions exist? [this question is intended to address barriers such as firewall policies, organizational software rqmts. and others.]
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| − | Is it more efficient to produce multiple data bases that include common information that can be tailored to a particular “system” or should systems be largely distributive in nature and grab rely on the root repositories of information? Or, perhaps more realistically, are both practices applied in most cases? [this question attempts to address the objective of having a dynamic source of information that is updated by the provider but can be accessed seamlessly for downstream analysis purposes without the need to conduct periodic data dumps to rebuild data inputs.]
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| − | GEOSS borne DataFed (http://datafedwiki.wustl.edu/index.php/DataFed_Wiki) and Earth Science Information Partners (ESIP), http://wiki.esipfed.org/index.php/Main_Page, appear to embrace the basis tenets of data system interoperability and have used “air” as a powerful illustrative medium. Does this DataFed/ESIP structure benefit the air quality user community? Or, does it have enormous potential to do so? What needs to be accomplished to elevate DataFed/ESIP to a more prominent position in mainstream data sharing and analysis activities? Or, has it reached that point? What, then, is the relationship among DataFed/ESIP and other organizational systems? Should other systems make some form of a commitment to embrace”standards” inherent in the DatFed/ESIP venture? What would those commitments be? By the way, what is the distinction between DataFed and ESIP?
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| − | Why bother? I have the ability to retrieve data and manipulate it the way I need to? Do not encumber me with all this collaboration and data harmonization talk.
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| − | Air quality modeling results offer an enormous suite of time, space, composition…1 typical CMAQ run provides about…100 species * 20 vertical layers times (SA of CONUS/144 km^2). And, modelers do not want to be burdened trying to explain what this all means, and modeling-policy types are just plain paranoid in general (sometimes, anyway). And, let’s not forget the nicely processed emission input fields. How do we deal with this? Recognizing these realities, is there value in having EPA provide 1 or 2 “seminal” base case and future year scenarios with adequate mete-data descriptions that can be archived, and queried on a time-space-species basis (yes…all species, all vertical levels and all hours of entire year or ensemble year run).
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| − | How can EPA’sGEOSS AMI facilitate interoperability of systems? Can EPA-AMI add an integration component to the existing project by project structure?
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| − | Can we focus on a specific example to highlight the benefits of facilitating observation and model integration efforts, such as working with HTAP to build or support related efforts to form an observational base for evaluating transport models? And, create a North Amerixan component for regional model evaluation support?
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| − | I like the features in VIEWS, why can’t our own EPA system do the same?
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| − | Why is it so hard to access AQS? (myth or fact…or a bit of both?), and, does DataMart handle earlier AQS concerns?
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| − | These questions are a start…
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Purpose
Bring together those organizations and individuals with key roles in retrieving, storing, disseminating and analyzing air quality data in order to explore efficient means of leveraging the numerous operations underway, and to assist EPA/OAQPS in defining its role in the larger air quality data community. The assumption is built off of existing systems for most efficient operation and not to develop from scratch a new infrastructure.
Objectives
- Develop an understanding of various, related air quality data processing programs/systems.
- Based on 1, consider developing a community-wide strategy that enhances communications across these systems by identifying efficiencies, minimizing redundancies, and addressing user defined needs.
- Provide guidance to EPA/OAQPS regarding the role of AirQuest and other information systems to work interactively with these systems and to service broader community needs.
Motivation
Note: This meeting is being driven by a number of events and discussions over the last five years that include:
- perceived frustration and/or misunderstanding in accessing EPA data bases,
- development of user friendly air quality data processing tools by Regional Planning Organizations (RPOs), the Health Effects Institute (HEI) and other organizations
- enhanced emphasis on inter agency collaboration through venues such as GEOSS
- elevated interest in using disparate sources of air quality observations (e.g., surface and satellite data), emissions and model results in conducting assessments
- Recognition of incorporating multiple spatial scales, and therefore a variety of information sources, to address increasing importance of hemispheric transport and climate-air quality interactions, and
- Recommendations from EPA’s Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee’s subcommittee on monitoring encouraging EPA to foster greater access and analysis of air quality data bases.
One of the objectives of the meeting is to inform investments by EPA under the Advanced Monitoring Initiative. AMI began in FY06 to demonstrate the potential of a Global Earth Observations System of System. In FY06 and FY07, a series of pilot projects were funded. For FY08, the funding has been allocated to four integrative themes: air quality, water quality, land use/multi-media, and information technology. The current proposal for the FY08 air theme is found here,
http://wiki.esipfed.org/index.php/Image:EPA_GEO_Air_Theme_Expanded_Proposal_b.doc This proposal calls for the development of three "operational use cases" (operational systems that support data access, integration, analysis, and visualization for specific decision making contexts) in the areas of model evaluation and intercomparison, air quality "re-analysis," and emission inventories. Input from the Summit will help to refine this proposal and develop a specific plan for spending the FY08 funds. - Terry Keating
