Testbed

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Products and Services Testbed

Objectives: Provide a test environment where prototype standards, services, protocols, and best practices can be explored and evaluated. The testbed serves as a forum for innovative collaborations across all sectors of the Federation to improve availability and access to our member products and services for mutual benefit. Comments about each testbed activity can be shared on this page.

Testbed Task 1: Expert Skills Database

The Federation collectively includes an exceptionally wide range of expertise among its participating members. These expert skills of Federation members will be categorized in a knowledge base and offered as a service. We use the master ESIP email list of over 700 names and Drupal tools to enable any member to associate their name to a skill and associated expertise level. Currently, the skill list consists of 60 information technology (IT) skills, but members can add additional categories. A GUI enables users to search this skill list by multiple criteria. http://www.esipfed.org/expert Ultimate Benefit: Promotion of expert skills available within the Federation.

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Testbed Task 2: Unique Data Identifiers

The Preservation and Stewardship Cluster and the NASA Technology Infusion Working Group have been considering permanent naming schemes for data products http://wiki.esipfed.org/index.php/Preservation_and_Stewardship. These identifiers can serve as references in journal articles and must include versioning representations. Many naming options have been promoted, but the best choices for Earth science data require careful examination. Two datasets may differ only in format, byte order, data type, access method, etc., creating facets (dimensions) not relevant to classification schemes for books (Library of Congress, Dewey Decimal). This testbed registers several Federation datasets to multiple naming conventions to evaluate the practical differences between them. Ultimate Benefit: Permanent, unique names for data Federation data products.

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Testbed Task 3: Semantic Registration of Data and Services

The Semantic Web Cluster has been developing ontologies for Data Service, Data types, and science concepts http://wiki.esipfed.org/index.php/Data_Service_Ontologies. The testbed enables providers to register their products and services semantically, which will provide more precise descriptions of their offerings. Ultimate Benefit: Better classification and discovery of specialized Federation products and services

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Testbed Task 4: Application-Specific Portals

The Air Quality Working Group has been developing an inventory of air quality data and data services. Other GEOSS Societal Benefit Areas could benefit from a similar capability to highlight offerings from Federation members. For this task, the Air Quality has been cloned for use by other application areas. Initially, a Water portal has been developed. Ultimate Benefit: Better marketing of targeted Federation products and services.

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Testbed FY 2011 Proposal Effort

The Products and Services committee plans to submit a proposal for new Testbed activities to the ESIP Finance and Appropriations Committee for suggested funding of the efforts. Please review and comment on the 2011 Proposal (doc) and (pdf) . If approved the P&S committee would the release a solicitation to all ESIP members to encourage proposals for participation.

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Tyler: In regards to the testbed activity on Data and Information Quality, we should work with the Information Quality cluster, because they are working on similar quality related activities.