Air Quality Session: 16th Federation meeting highlights

Back to: Air Quality Cluster

The following summary is compiled by notes taken by Sanjeeb Bhoi and Stefan Falke. Feel free to add anything that has been inadvertently missed.

Steve Young & Ed Washburn, Co-chairs of EPA GEOSS Coordinating Committee

Steve Young gave a presentation highlighting the data and tool needs of environmental decision makers and EPA's interest and hopes for GEOSS.
The need for help in interpreting data, not just more data, was emphasized.
An important need is real time data access and analysis.
New project beginning soon under EPA's Advanced Monitoring Initiative (AMI) focus on GEOSS objectives
Much of the discussion centered on the possibility of a workshop between the Cluster and EPA that would highlight EPA's earth observation needs from the perspective of their AMI projects and would provide potential opportunities for the collaboration between the Federation and EPA.

Action item: Organize a Cluster-EPA workshop. Steve Kempler and Stefan Falke are taking the lead.

EIE Portal & Wiki

The portal should be more than a list of datasets. It should provide context to those datasets, including how they are used and how they are created.
Ready ability to access data for decision makers should be made through the portal.
Identify user needs and intended target audience. Instead of pushing data/tools to the user community through the portal, we could attend the user's internal meetings and present what the Cluster can offer.
Access and analyze the current state of connection among key players in decision support processes.
The Cluster's focus so far has been in the air quality mangement and research communities. Broader cluster particpation could extend that focus.
Federation of earth science information partner and others need to be identified with which the cluster can work together. Some of these include communities forming within the Geosptial One Stop Portal.
Use wiki to capture what is known and provide ideas and discussion both internally and for public.

Action taken:Howard Burroughs has created a template of the NASA Earth-Sun System parameters, data, models, and decision support tools. We can use the template to add air quality related components. "Collection bins" have also been created on this AQ Wiki for collecting items and ideas for discussion among the Cluster.

Air quality & Education

Rita Freuder gave a presentation and asked the Cluster to identify available educational resources in the ESIP Federation.
Cluster attendees had limited educational components to offer but it was suggested that the Cluster could provide input to educatonal focused projects.

Action taken: Created a "collection box" of air quality educational projects, tools, and products to assist in identifying Cluster-Education opportunities.

Technical Track

Rudy Husar discussed the role of web services, interoperability standards, and SOA in developing the producer-to-consumer networks the Federation aims to facilitate. Examples from DataFed. Presentation Link
Karl Benedict discussed PHAiRS' project implementation of web services for data access and analysis. Presentation Link
PHAiRS - DataFed Interaction.