Solta 2011 Pre-Meeting Agenda

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Dear Colleagues,

Thank you again for expressing your interest in the Air Quality Community of Practice meeting in Solta, Croatia (23-25 August 2011). The motto of the workshop is Connecting air quality data: from virtual to real

, and by this we imply that there shall be enough room for discussions so that actual obstacles can be identified and both a vision and a workplan can be designed how to move this forward. In order to make efficient use of our time in Croatia, we ask you all to prepare for the workshop in the following ways (aside from arranging your travel etc.):

1. Self-Introduction, 3-4 slides, 5-6 min/participant, 2hrs total

Slides 1-2: Name, Institution, Relevant research, development or organizational work on AQ data system interoperability and networking Slide(s) 3-(4): Involvement and participation in projects, programs, i.e. list of Integrating Initiatives.

2. Description of AQ data systems

• Standards-based data servers
• Other data portals, file servers
• Standards and conventions (netCDF, CF, OGC W*S, ISO)

3. Common issues with current systems

In order to help structuring this information, the categories below are suggested, subject to modifications. Note that explicit discussion of metadata is left for future sessions.

• standard definitions (clarity, ambiguity, completeness, ...)
• standard development and documentation
• open-source server software development
• platform issues, portability
• coding language(s), code interchangeability
• coding style and software development approaches
• organisation of data
• data formats, standard compliance
• data access
• performance
• flexibility
• user friendliness
• meeting user demands (fitness for purpose)
• governance, responsibilities, etc.

 5.) hopefully, the synthesis view from 4 will give us some good guidance how to structure specific discussion sessions on the way to improve the situation. In these discussions we aim to identify manageable work packages where possible, but we should also arrive at clear statements about obstacles that can in principle be overcome but where we have no organisational structure, no funding or no clear idea yet how to do it.

 6.) after looking into the near future, we would like to go a bit further and let you develop your dreams about the situation in 10 years from now. We think that this might be most fruitful if we define end-to-end use cases and illuminate these from various directions. Can interoperable systems be developed to a stage that they can target different user communities (from scientists to managers, media people and the general public)? Do we need special purpose systems? How can users find out about (each) system? What shall be common among such systems and where can they differ? In this context we would also like to bring up the big issues of data quality, traceability and metadata management as these will be pivotal to the future development and they will ultimately determine success or failure of these applications. For these discussions we will approach a few of you individually and ask you to prepare short "seed presentations" to give your view on some of these points.

 7.) at the end of the workshop we would like to come back to the near term workplan and review it briefly in light of the results obtained from the longer-term future discussions. This work plan shall be a tangible result from the workshop and we hope that it can then also be used to attract further funding to continue and expand on the ongoing activities.