Content Analysis of Interoperability Abstracts

In preparation for the AGU session: "Interoperability..." we have performed a crude content analysis of submitted abstracts. It is not clear what purpose this excercise might have beyond informing the interested participants. The list of 21 analyzed abstracts mostly (18/21) includes contributions from the Earth Science Informatics domain. As seen below the classification of the contents is rather arbitrary.

Application Areas

Half of the abstracts (11/21) are applicable to general Earth Science while the other half is devoted to applications that are targeted to either geographic (e.g. Antartica) or Earth Science subdomains (e.g. hydrology, ozone)

The target users for the information systems were mostly for scientists (13/21). There are also significant efforts (5/21) devoted to public/educational users. Three papers on interoperability were "conceptual", which makes them hard to classify.

Data Access Services

Of the 21 abstracts, 13 indicated the use of WMS and 9 indicated the use of WCS Standards. Six of the abstracts referrerd to both WMS and WCS.

In 15 of the abstracts interoperability pertains to interoperability of data access services using the above standards.

Data Processing and Discovery Services

Four contributions are devoted to data processing services and the orchestration of service chains. Two papers deal with data/service discovery.

Nine contributions refer to interoperable information systems that include end user tools such as data browsers.