Closing the Gap Between Global Environmental Sensing Needs

and Cyber Infrastructure Tools

Jim GrayJeff Burch

Mark EllismanMiron Livny

David MaidmentPhillip Papadopolis

Premise: 5 year horizon• In the next 5 years

– Many CI tools will mature driven by commerce, entertainment, …

– Some things will not

• What requirements are unique to Global Environmental Sensing and so are unlikely to be served by others?

Experiments &Instruments

Simulations facts

facts

answers

questions

Literature

Other Archives facts

facts

What is Unique • Multiple data sources: not just one instrument

– Satellite data (remote sensing)– Atmospheric, aquatic weather, temperature, ….– Geology, seismology, hydrology, oceanography….– Ecology, species, fauna, …– Land use, demographics,…– Model, simulation data

• Coupling among your systems:you can hang together or hang separately

• Strong spatial-temporal component– Maps– 3D– Time – long baseline analysis

• Your unique vocabularies, instruments, and datasets.

Recommendation #1

• Spend the next year trying to answer the question “what’s unique and what’s similar.”

• Build the requirements

• Find commonalities among the observatories so that you can pool your resources.

• Link to other observatories so that you can benefit from their work

Recommendation #2At a Minimum, You Must

• Capture the bits (level 0 data)

• Curate the bits (document how they were collected document what they mean)

• Preserve the bits (for >30 years)

• Provide access to the bits.

• You aim to do much more but… don’t mess this up!

A LIMS

The “O” and “S” wordsControlled Vocabulary

Replicated File Systems& DataBases

Portal & Web Service

What You Get For Free (in 5 years)

• 10x from Moore’s law• Naming• Authentication services, authorization styles.• Byte Movers & High-speed Internet• Working and interoperable web services. • Byte Storage & Generic database systems• Simple workflow systems • Some vocabulary tools (some “O” and “S” stuff) • Generic data mining tools• Generic visualization tools• Small-scale LIMS

What Can Cyber Infrastructure(and the IT ecosystem)

Do for You? • Can do:

– Generic Concepts – Generic Tools

• Can’t do:– Science– Define your vocabulary (the “O” and “S” words)– Your Services – Integration of your stuff (building your portals)

Advice• Leverage commonality among observatories.• Encourage curation tools

to document data capture, data meaning to track data lineage

• Fund Curation & Preservation as part of projectsNot an un-funded mandate

• Build real prototypes in new style, it appears current efforts continue the “My Data” culture. Treat data from public infrastructure as public.Like NIH: Publish data with research.

• Continue building “dashboards” and “workbenches” enables data federation & integration tools encourages tool-builders

Closing the Gap Between Global Environmental Sensing Needs

and Cyber Infrastructure Tools

Jim GrayJeff Burch

Mark EllismanMiron Livny

David MaidmentPhillip Papadopolis