The User and the GEOSS Architecture V - Denver

Introduction:

This workshop is a forum for users to interact with technologists to address the benefits and challenges of an advanced global system of systems providing earth observing data and information for the benefits of society. It is a unique opportunity for users to understand and impact GEOSS. Two of the nine GEOSS societal benefit areas, air quality and climate change, will be highlighted at the workshop and an informal environment will be provided for exchange of ideas and to make recommendations to the GEO committees formulating GEOSS as they move forward with implementation. The workshop will influence GEOSS architecture. During the workshop, there will be an OGC standards-based networking demo, which is part of the OGC GEOSS Services Network (GSN) coordinated by George Percivall of OGC. This Denver IGARSS06 demo is lead by Liping Di of George Mason University.

Proposed [Tentative] Scenarios for the Demo:

The demo will illustrate near real-time data access, browsing, and analysis of distributed air quality data from satellite and surface sensors. In particular, a smoke incursion on June 26-30, 2006 from Manitoba to the U.S. will be explored and analyzed. The demo is a continuation of earlier demos. More clarification will follow shortly. Ideas are most welcome. 1. Monitoring & Forecasting: AQ Status and Pattern  2. Analysis: Sources, Transport Processes  3. Impact: Health Exposure, Visibility, Radiation

Invitation for Participation in the Demo:

For this demo participation is invited in three categories: (1) data provision, (2) data integration and (3) data usage. Data providers are sought to have air quality relavent data accessible through one of the OGC or related standard service interfaces. Included in this category are portals and other data access mediators. Data Integrators include service providers who can perform transformation, overlay and other processing services, service chaining and other integration services. Users of the data systems (typically air quality analysts) are key participants since they define the purpose of the demo and also evaluate its problems and merits.

Denver Presentations:

During the Denver workshop there was a live GSN Demo by Liping Di as planned. Two additional presentations, one by George Percivall and another by Rudolf Husar were also related to GSN.

GSN Live Demo by Liping Di

GMU led development and presented a demonstration on Air Quality Science Analysis-- Pollutant Sources, Transport Processes which demonstrated the use of service chaining with OGC Web Services for Geo-processing Model for Air Quality Image.

A Flash capture of the demo is available.  

A companion presentation to the Flash movie is available.

Open standards for GEOSS Interoperability by George Percivall

Presentation by George Percivall: "Implementing the GEOSS Architecture using open standards"

Architectures and Technologies for Agile, User-Oriented Air Quality Data Systems by Rudolf Husar

Summary: The current challenges for air quality information systems include: delivery of air quality data in real time; characterization of air pollution through the integration of multi-sensory data and providing agile support to regulatory AQ management. The talk describes the architecture and implementation of a standards based system for accessing and processing air quality data. The web services based architecture is illustrated through two use cases: (1) real time monitoring of a smoke event and (2) comparison hemispheric chemical transport models with surface-based chemical measurements.

Links to the Presentations: The presentations are available as PPT slides as well as narrated Flash Screencasts of the same slides. 

Acknowledgements: The presentation on Air Quality Background and Information Architecture benefited greatly from ideas, and challenges posed by a number of experienced individuals, from EPA (Rich Scheffe, Steve Young, Terry Keating), NASA (Lawrence Friedl, Kathy Fontaine). The participation in the NASA Information Technology Infusion workgroup (Karen Moe, Bran Wilson, Liping Di and others) was an intense collective learning experience. At CAPITA, Kari Hoijarvi engineered and implemented DataFed; Stefan Falke contributed datasets and application software.

The two pre-recoded screencast demos were developed in collaboration with the GSN community as part of the The User and the GEOSS Architecture workshop series. Their constructive comments regarding the presentation and the experience gained from the previous demos is greatly appreciated. The screencast demos have evolved from earlier GSN and GALEON interoperability demonstrations. The intent is to retain the core demo as a semi permanent, but continually evolving network devoted to air quality applications. It is hoped that in such a semi-permanent GSN network, broader international participation will be possible.

In preparing these demos many different datasets were tested. The subset that was chosen for Use Case 1: Smoke transport, is listed in the table below. Each dataset can be viewed and explored through a link to the DataFed Viewer. Links to the data provider web pages are also given:  

Use Case 2: The Global Model-Data Comparison is based on model data prepared by the European AeroCom Aerosol Model Comparison project. The aerosol chemical data over the US were integrated and provided to the DataFed federation through the VIEWS system. It is hoped that such international collaboration can be expanded and intensified through GEOSS.

Links:

IGARSS06 Denver- Symposium Main Page, July 31 - Aug. 4, 2006
IEEE, GEOSS Workshop Main Page - “The User and the GEOSS Architecture V", Applications for North America Sunday, July 30, 2006     
The User and the GEOSS Architecture (PDF) - Background/Architecture of Workshop Series     
Workshop Agenda (doc)

GSN Demo Links

Trajectory Service - Communal Development of a Flexible, Distributed, Trajectory Service Chain
Component Web Services and Service Chaining

GSN Demo Discussion:

Trajectory Service

GSN Telecon Links:

2006-06-09 - GSN Telecon (ppt)
2006-06-22 - GSN Telecon (ppt)
2006-07-11 - Next GSN Telecon