2011-09-11 AQ Community Catalog Report to ESIP
This is a report to the ESIP Federation submitted by Washington University, Center for Air Pollution Impact and Trend Analysis for maintaining the Air Quality Community Catalog and the GEO Air Quality Community of Practice Portal content management and training. These activities were performed in accordance with the work plan for the Air Quality Workgroup for 2011.
Air Quality Community Catalog (AQComCat) maintenance and interface with GEOSS
A. AQComCat Software Upgrade. The data storage for the metadata stored by the Catalog has been transferred int a SQL relational database. Also, new indices were created for the key tables. This resulted in a significant improvement in the Catalog performance and also made the data maintenance more robust by imposing relational integrity constrains.
B. Updating the Metadata Facets. The initial Facets for labeling and finding air quality data were prepared by a small subset of the ESIP AQ Work Group. During the Solta workshop, these facets were re-examined and modified by the international workshop participants. The discussion and the suggested modifications are recorded and being processed for inclusion in AQComCat
C. Catalog Content. There is a new group of datasets registered in the Catalog. There represents data from the Air Quality Data Network as of August 2011. Each registered entry is originating from a WCS server that is part of the ADN. Through the catalog, the data are accessible through a suitable WCS client, such as the DataFed data browser.
D. AQComCat Link to GI-Cat. During a special session of the Solta meeting, the developers of the GI-Cat Federated Catalog were conducting a tutorial on GI-Cat. At the same time R. Husar and K Hoijarvi have performed a similar tutorial on AQComCat. As a result, the GI-Cat group was able to federate the AQComCat contents into GI-Cat. This activity has demonstrated that networking of the general federation GI-Cat catalogs and the domain-specific AQComCat is practical and it should be pursued. It was also concluded that since GI-Cat can harvest the content of AQComCat, it can the pass on the content into the GEOSS Clearinghouse. It was agreed to to pursue that path.
Relevant links for the AQComCat:
GEO Air Quality Community of Practice Portal content management and training
During 2011, the GEO Air Quality portal has undergone considerable transformation and upgrade.
A: Moving the GEO AQ CoP site from Drupal the ESIPwiki. This transfer was necessary since the Drupal site was too difficult to maintain and we had no means of learning the Drupal maintenance and development. Hence the home page of the GEO AQ CoP has been re-implemented at GEO AQ CoP.
B: Air Quality Integrating Initiatives. An extensive list of national and international initiatives was compiled as candidates for interaction with the AQ CoP.
- Data Portals
- Science Teams
- Decision Support
- Facilitators
C: Solta 2011 Workshop Website. The Topical Workshop, Aug 23-25, 2011, Stomorska, Solta, Croatia. Networking Air Quality Observations and Models: From Virtual to Real has an extensive website Air_Quality_Data_Network_Solta_2011 . It contains the workshop planning documentation, agenda, participants and other documentation. The key recordings have been transcribed and shown on the wiki. It is anticipated that some discussion may continue after the meeting but much of that will be conducted on the ADN wiki, see below. This site is meant to stay dormant after a period.
D: Air Quality Data Network Site. This is the persistent site of the Air Quality Data Network. It states the Goal: An AQ Data Network to Find, Access, Understand and Merge Observations, Emissions and Models by Enabling Existing Data Portals, Decision and Science Projects to create and use the Network. The relevant sections of the Solta meeting were summarized and transferred to these wiki pages.
