NASA ROSES 2009 ACCESS RFP

AQCluster Telecons

The NASA (ACCESS) Program is seeking proposals that address earth science user access to distributed web services and service registries.

NASA Advancing Collaborative Connections for Earth System Science(ACCESS) Program

• Increase the interconnectedness and reuse of IT software, techniques, and services for Earth Science
• Supports capabilities for freer movement of data and information in distributed environments

NASA 2009 ROSES Call for Proposals: ACCESS solicitation

Registering and finding NASA data and services: methods, tools and facilities

• Many web-based ES applicable services have been created
• However, these are are not accessible or easily discoverable

The ACCESS program seeks proposals to:

• Provide means for users to discover and use services provided by NASA, other Agencies, academia..
  • Detail how services will be discovered by users
  • What data system components will be used to bolster the persistent availability of these services
    • through GUI interface or
    • machine-to-machine interface

Additional Requrements

• Serve the research and applied science – include IT and Earth science experts.
• Identify the Earth science focus area and tie to an Earth science research issue(s)
• Identify the improvements of by the proposed tools/services.
• Provide an operations concept for continuance of the tools and services
• ES Data and Software rights, life-cycle cost for the targeted users.

2.2 Participation in Earth Science Data System Working Groups, required. 2.3 Persistence of ACCESS Tools and Services. ACCESS for development, not for maintainance! Have to address maintainance and life cycle in the proposal. 3. Education and Public Outreach Opportunities, strongly encourages supplemental Edu/Outreach supplement address the tool or service life cycle and means for continued operation once ACCESS deployment resources end.

3. Education and Public Outreach Opportunities NASA policy strongly encourages participation in Education and Public Outreach (E/PO) activities by members of the science community. You may be eligible to propose a supplemental Education or Outreach effort if your research proposal is selected for award.

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ESIP NOI for ACCESS Proposal

Details on NOI Pg. 38 of NASA Proposers Handbook

Short Title (50 Char)

Sharing, Finding and Using Air Quality Services

Long Title (254 Char)

Sharing, Finding and Using Distributed Air Quality Services: Improving the Use of NASA and partner Satellite, Aerial, Surface and Modeling Data and Tools within the GEOSS Framework

Brief Description

The proposed project will integrate existing infrastructure components within the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS) Air Quality Community in order to develop an improved system for connecting air quality users with NASA data and services. The proposal addresses the area of interest specified in the ACCESS RFP as, "Improving Earth science user access to web services and service registries."

Over the past two years, the GEOSS Architecture Implementation Pilot (AIP) has collaboratively created the common infrastructure consisting of registries for data, services, and standards, clearinghouses for harvesting metadata and providing API metadata search interfaces, and portals that provide graphical user interfaces (GUI) to the clearinghouses. As part of this Pilot process, the ESIP Air Quality Workgroup has improved the metadata associated with a given air quality data access service as well as developed an Air Quality Community Catalog and Portal. The standard metadata is stored in the Air Quality Community Catalog. The Air Quality community portal facilitates service registration for air quality service providers and allows service users to connect to and use the GEOSS infrastructure, which in turn allows sharing of data, tools and information for a variety of uses and leads to better air quality research and decision-support.

With the foundational elements in a fairly stable prototype form, we are proposing collaborative development across the air quality community in connecting users to standards-based interfaces for registering, finding and binding to NASA web services within the GEOSS framework. A key contribution of this project is the creation of reusable, portable data access components and integration of generally applicable tools and methods for finding and accessing Earth Science data. While these tools and methods will be developed and tested for the air quality community, they are all standards based and therefore can be easily leveraged for reuse within other Societal Benefit Area Communities (i.e. disaster management, health, water quality) and within related government agency efforts.

The Federation for Earth Science Information Partners (ESIP) will serve as project PI, leveraging its partnerships with NASA, collaboration framework that is already being used by a core group within the air quality community as well as its coordinated development of the GEOSS Air Quality Community catalog and portals. Collaborators will include university, government, and industry partners participating in the GEOSS AIP. The collaborators will range from air quality data providers (including NASA satellite derived and aerial products), to air quality modelers and researchers, to air quality application developers and air quality managers. Each user type has distinct interests and uses for NASA data and services that need to be considered in achieving a successful operational system for sharing, finding and using distributed data and tools.

It is expected that by the summer of 2009, some of the core GEOSS AIP components will be considered to be near a TRL 7 as they will have been tested and demonstrated in an operational environment and available in an publicly available and semi-operational system. The proposed work will raise the TRL level by integrating the pieces to build a functioning system and establishing the connections across the provider-user system within a GEOSS framework. It is anticipated that ESIP's coordination of the project will leverage ESIP's partnerships with other government agencies in developing an plan to sustain and persist the system.

Names of Co-Is and Collaborators

To be added.

Possible ESIP AQ Response to ACCESS CFP

Through its contributions to the GEOSS AIP, the ESIP Air Quality Workgroup appears to be in a position to submit a response. ESIP has been actively involved in the creation of the air quality community catalog and portal and their connection with the GEOSS Common Infrastructure (including the GEOSS Clearninghouses and GEOSS Registry) in providing standards-based interfaces for registering and finding data services. As the catalog, portal and overall ‘publish and find’ processes become more stable, one of the next steps is to solidify the process of ‘binding’ to and using the services.

ESIP’s investment in the AIP combined with the leveraging of Air Quality Workgroup participants own projects in creating and maintaining the air quality community components of the GEOSS AIP provides a foundation on which to address the ACCESS Program objectives. An ACCESS Program project could be an opportunity for support to enhance the community infrastructure and improve its value (aka use) and persistence by applying it to the air quality community’s activities in research, applied science and management.

The includes the following:

“Improving Earth science user access to web services and service registries: Users searching and using NASA Earth science data systems often do not have broad knowledge of services that may be available pertinent to their data of interest. Many web-based services have been created that are of direct applicability to Earth science research and applied science uses. Many of these services, however, are not easily discoverable or are exposed through very limited access points.

The ACCESS program seeks proposals that address this information gap by providing the means for users to discover and use services being made available by NASA, other Federal agencies, academia, the private sector, and others. Proposals should detail how existing services will be discovered by users and what other available data system components will be used to bolster the persistent availability of these services in both a traditional user interactive GUI interface or those using a machine-to-machine interface.”

Workgroupd Discussion Items

• Should the ESIP Air Quality Workgroup lead a proposal in response to the ACCESS solicitation?
• If so, which of the two topics: Publish-Find Services or Metadata

RBH Apr 1 09:

• ACCESS is for development, not for maintenance - how we phrase it?
• Tone down operational. Want be near TR7 this summer.
• Lots of work on service standard, metadata standard, discovery standard; metadata flow
• ACCESS calls for finding, accessing NASA products ??, not GEOSS. Need to phrase it as both.
• Should use this platform for including EPA, NASA, DOE +++ International Orgs into the Publish/Find/Bind system

Schedule

• Letter of Intent due April 1.
• Proposal, June 2009