Summer 2013 Meeting

*** This was the planning and development space for the Visioneers. For all meeting details see the ESIP site: esipfed.org/meetings. ***

Dates

July 9-12, 2013

Venue

Friday Center at UNC Chapel Hill, North Carolina
Afternoon at NC Museum of Natural Sciencees (http://naturalsciences.org)
Registration

Program

The Summer ESIP Federation meeting (July 9-12, 2013 in Chapel Hill, North Carolina) will feature topics related to the meeting theme of Building the Value Chain for Earth Science Data and Information in Disaster Planning, Response, Management and Awareness. The agenda will follow the following structure:

July 9

• Workshops

July 10:

• Morning – plenary
• Lunch at Friday Center
• Afternoon – special sessions at NC Museum of Natural Sciences (transportation will be provided, if requested)
• Early Evening – reception

July 11

• Breakout sessions (work sessions, discussion-based sessions and workshops)

July 12 (adjourn at lunch)

• Breakout sessions (work sessions, discussion-based sessions and workshops)

We are inviting proposals for sessions that support the meeting’s theme and which further the on-going work of our community. Unique to this meeting, we have the opportunity to spend one afternoon at the new Nature Research Center at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences (Raleigh). The Museum has opened its doors to us to allow us to share the exciting technology and other products you create with the public. Visualizations and animations will play very well in this environment, as will short talks (15-20 minutes) about how science data and technologies are informing Disaster Planning, Management , Response and Awareness. Submit your session proposal here. Descriptions of the special platforms follow below:

Immersive Theater (IT). The IT is best for immersive media display. Almost any visualization that involves a 3D dataset would work in the theater. Currently it is using the Unity game engine for presenting. Unity can ingest most polygonal data formats and warp the display to look correct on the panoramic screen. It can also do show movie play back by mapping the movie onto a Unity game surface. That probably sounds more complicated than it is—it’s pretty straightforward. The big advantage of using a game engine, of course, is that we can add interactivity to the presentation; this will also require considerably more work up front, including probably programming, so we’d want to really showcase something special to make it worth the effort. There is in-house expertise is in 3D graphics and design and will be available to help render your media correctly.

Daily Planet (DP). The DP is an impressive platform that uses Powerpoint in HD format. The Powerpoint should be on a thumbdrive or other portable media. We will load the Powerpoint onto the Windows servers that run the DP. We can accommodate laptops for output, but this is not recommended. The DP can display up to three screens at once, in various formats (big screen below, two small ones up top; one huge screen; two screens stacked; others). Each screen (channel) can be independently controlled. There are a set number of formats. We can also do a HUGE presentation of a movie or other media on the DP in a special “Event” mode. This “Event” mode requires special processing. The final output is 1920 x 1905 pixels, but the system will only accept HD (1920 x 1080) input. One way to accommodate this is to compose the movie in After Effects (or other video editing software) at 1920 x 1905, then “squash” the movie down to 1920 x 1080 at rendering. It will then be “unsquashed” when it plays through the system. As with any projected image, there is some light bounce in the DP; that is, light hits the DP screen and then scatters. This can cause burn out or wash out of the images. We recommend over-saturating your images by about 10% and upping the contrast by about the same amount for best results. There is no “best” setting, and again testing in advance is highly recommended.

There are two microphone channels for the DP, so you can have two presenters, or a presenter and an interviewer. Presentations in the DP can be using a built-in camera system. We can also do more elaborate camera setups (up to a total of five in the DP) for live production.

Theme

• Disasters & Data/Information

• Data life cycle and disaster response
• Connecting to climate theme from winter meeting - taking data to action
• Bringing Data and Information to Action: Meeting needs on the ground in preparing for and response to disasters and extreme weather events
• Building the Value Chain for Earth Science Data and Information in Disaster Planning, Response, Management and Awareness

Session Ideas

• Data sharing across agencies
• Sea level rise (UNC, TheSeaMonster.net), John Bruno
• Climate change impacts on cities (NYC), Cynthia Rosenzweig, NASA GISS
• Infographics workshop
• Crowd sourcing scenario throughout meeting for hurricane(?) response
• Emlyn Koster, Director, NC Museum of Natural Sciences
• Presentation on New US Policy on Open Access to Federally Sponsored Research

Known Activities/Sessions

• Co-located DataONE User Working Group (July 7-8)
• July 10 afternoon at the Museum of Natural Sciences and Specialty Venue Format Requirements (baseline)

• Immersive Theater
• Daily Planet
• Broadcast

• ISEES town hall

Action Items

• First timer follow up
• IT&I Rant & Rave on Infographics (periscopic.com)

Earth Intelligence: Infographics Contest

formalizing the workflows (data access, etc.) and the goals through Summer meeting: exhibit at 2014 Winter meeting

Draft:

Between NOW and the summer meeting the initial challenge is to locate (for potential contestants) data resources for a subset of natural disasters: coastal vulnerabilities to earthquake (tsunami) wind, surge, flooding, algal blooms, and sea level rise. As this is a fundamentally ESIP thing to do, cataloging these data should be possible, but might take a while... and then there's the data access issues... So we need to be shape the data access part before we can invite people to use the data to tell their stories.

In the Winter of 2013, the Federation announced the theme of moving from climate assessment, to intelligence and action.

This move is signaled by a shift from earth data displays to earth data infographics and earth data public awareness and policy.

To promote the development of earth data-rich infographics on the topic of understanding natural disasters through the use of earth data resources, the Federation is now proposing a contest for the best earth-data infographic about natural disasters.

ESIP is building a resource for infographics designers: check out the Infographics page (and thanks to Sarah Clark for putting this together!).

The goal of this contest is to encourage and support visualizations that enable the public to access earth science data and to realize how these data can help us understand natural disasters and our vulnerability to these. This means that there are 2 main types of infographic: the first is an infographic that explores the DATA, and explains how the data relate to other types of information that people already know. The second is an infographic that explores the PROCESS of using earth data to make decisions and to stay safe in a disaster. Other types of infographic are also possible.

The contest will include two tracks: students and open. The student track is available to any student from high-school through university (and post-docs too). The open track is available to any submission, including corporations.

Prizes: ???? The winning infographic will be displayed at the ESIP Summer meeting and ????

Deadlines:

Rules: ???? [should be clear and specific]

The submitted infographic must be original and not have been made public prior to this event.

Can we do star ratings or other simplified ratings within the commons for combined star and comments for the infographics? Can we use these ratings in the balloting for the winners. This would give us a chance to exercise a commenting system in the Commons in addition to enabling the competition.

The Foundation for Earth Science will receive a non-exclusive right to use all submissions. bruce c (talk) 12:13, 6 February 2013 (MST)