2013 AGU ESSI Session Ideas

This wiki is intended to help the AGU Earth and Space Science Informatics (ESSI) Focus Group collaborate on themes and topics for the December 2013 AGU Fall Meeting. Please be sure to submit your session proposals to the official AGU Fall Meeting Session Proposal Site by the April 19, 2013 deadline. Additional information on submission policies and guidelines can be found here. Recent session titles and statistics from past AGU Informatics sessions can be found here.

How to add content: To contribute to an idea to this page, login or create an account. Once logged in, on this page copy the session template below and click the edit tab. Paste the template into the wiki text box and then fill out the requested information.

Session template:

=== Replace with Suggested Session Title=== 
* Description: 
* Name/Contact: 
* Others interested in similar session? If you are interested in co-convening or support this session add your name here. 

Session Ideas

Earth Science Mobile Apps and Other Mobile Technologies to Improve Data Generation, Access and Usability

• Description:

Mobile devices (smart phones and tablets) are commonplace among Earth science data users. This provides opportunities and challenges for bringing new capabilities to users via apps that go beyond what can be achieved with traditional computer applications This session focuses on the innovative use of mobile device unique capabilities (their mobility and ubiquity; location awareness; photo, video, and sound recording; accelerometers, networking, etc.) for improving data generation, access, and usability for the Earth science community.

• Name/Contact:

Stephen Berrick, Bob Cook

• Others interested in similar session? If you are interested in co-convening or support this session add your name here.

Data Systems Interoperability - Solutions for Bridging Organizational Stovepipes for Improving Data Access

• Description:

Users have multiple Earth science data systems available to them from many domestic and international organizations. Although there is increasing adherence to data system standards, users are still confronted with having to learn the unique access tools from each organization. This session focuses on technologies that improve data discovery, search, and access for users needing data across multiorganizational data system boundaries by harmonizing multi-data system access and giving the user a seamless experience.

• Name/Contact:

Stephen Berrick, Curt Tilmes

• Others interested in similar session? If you are interested in co-convening or support this session add your name here.

Ruth Duerr (or really this should be Siri Jodha)

Deborah McGuinness dlm@cs.rpi.edu - I am happy dropping the semantic session below if we can update this one to include semantics in the focus of this one. for example, we might say

This session focuses on technologies, such as semantic technologies, that improve....

and i might change the title to something like Improving discovery, access, and reuse of data - that generalizes this and i think can encompass what i proposed below.

Geoscience vocabulary development and applications on the Semantic Web

• Description:

Geoscience vocabularies have been widely used in eduction and research. The Semantic Web provides a new platform for building, extending, encoding and using geoscience vocabularies. Along with the fast-increasing open data efforts in the field of geoscience, vocabularies are becoming a central topic of interests. This session focuses on methods used in arranging and encoding geoscience vocabularies for the Semantic Web, technologies in vocabulary services and progresses in deploying vocabularies to support geoscience data services. Domain specific case studies are especially welcome.

• Name/Contact:

Xiaogang Ma

• Others interested in similar session? If you are interested in co-convening or support this session add your name here or email Xiaogang Ma ( max7@rpi.edu ).

Cynthia L. Chandler (BCO-DMO, WHOI) interested in co-convening

Semantically Enabling Discovery, Access, and Integration of Scientific Data

• Description:
• Name/Contact: Deborah McGuinness dlm@cs.rpi.edu (I am also ok dropping off if others would like to co-convene; question should this be merged into the one above if we include a bit more semantic slant?)
• Others interested in similar session? If you are interested in co-convening or support this session add your name here.

Bob Arko (LDEO, R2R Program): I'd be interested in co-convening or supporting. (Or else I'd be interested in merging with the session above.) Jens Klump (GFZ Potsdam): same as Bob. David Arctur (UT-Austin, OGC): Could this be about using semantics tools to enable more expert filtering for search of online content? Could we make the catalogs & portals more expert at understanding what we're searching for? Brian Wilson (JPL): I'm interested in co-convening a session like this. My take on what it might cover follows.

Semantically Enabling Discovery, Access, and Integration of Scientific Data (2)

• Description: Data centers are now publishing more metadata either as Atom/RSS 'casts' (XML entries with embedded metadata), or as Linked Open Data (LOD), or as ISO Metadata records. For example, the existence of data collections and granules are advertised via datacasts, available web services via service casts, and geophysical events with relevant datasets & images as event casts. The challenge now is to overlay semantics on this metadata world to support rich discovery/access and semantic integration. This also involves building bridges between older metadata technologies (XML, JSON) and semantic RDF & OWL with SPARQL querying and inference.

Submissions are encouraged in, but not limited to:

- Experiences with publishing metadata via data, service and event casts
- Publishing science metadata as Linked Open Data (LOD) for semantic discovery & integration
- User interfaces and open-source tools for publishing and displaying casts and LOD
- Providing interoperable search via federated OpenSearch protocol
- Ontology-enhanced data search and filtering
- Semantic data integration using RDF and micro-ontologies
- Data integration success stories that span technological divides:  SQL, OpenSearch/XML, REST/JSON services, SPARQL/inference.

• Name/Contact: Brian.Wilson@jpl.nasa.gov
• Others interested in similar session? If you are interested in co-convening or support this session add your name here.

Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) for Geosciences and Geoinformatics

• Description: This session focuses on the growing role of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) in Science. The session provides a forum for both the latest advances in FOSS-empowered research and also successful applications of existing FOSS tools for geoscientific tasks in Geoinformatics and all other AGU disciplinary sessions.
• Name/Contact: Jens Klump/Peter Löwe, GFZ Potsdam, jens.klump@gfz-potsdam.de
• Others interested in similar session? If you are interested in co-convening or support this session add your name here.

Data Scientists Come of Age

• Description: It is hard to click a Web page and not see mention of data scientists: in some they are even called sexy. In the past, most geoscientists did not have skills to effectively manage, curate, preserve and analyze complex volumes of digital data, whilst data professionals did not understand the science. Today the required skills lie in the domain of data scientists: people who know both the special needs of Earth science data AND have domain expertise in Earth science data, data structures, formats, vocabularies, ontologies, etc. This session seeks expositions from practicing data scientists to tell THEIR story - credentials, knowledge and skills; technical and scientific needs; and incentives and rewards that are important. We seek ways to make data science routine.
• Name/Contact: Peter Fox, Dewayne Branch, Ruth Duerr, Lesley Wyborn
• Interest?