BlogMyData A Virtual Research Environment for collaborative visualization of environmental data Andrew Milsted, Jeremy Frey Department of Chemistry, University

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BlogMyData A Virtual Research Environment for collaborative visualization of environmental data Andrew Milsted, Jeremy Frey Department of Chemistry, University of Southampton Jon Blower, Adit Santokhee Reading e-Science Centre, University of Reading
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How do scientists collaborate day-to-day? Scholarly literature Face-to-face meetings Informal email discussions Artefacts very basic: PDFs Static images Lowest common denominator approach Context is lost Preservation is ad-hoc
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http://www..org Combines web-based visualization With a blog engine To create a VRE for collaborative interpretation of data www.rdg.ac.uk/godiva2 + = blogs.chem.soton.ac.uk @Keith: What do you think is going on here? @Tom: Looks like a bug in the model. @Harry: Could be a bad observation. Ill overlay the obs database.
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4 Godiva2 Interactively explore 4D geospatial raster datasets on the web ~40 datasets Research data, operational forecasts, satellite products Images generated dynamically for maximum flexibility Hides technical complexity of the data from the users http://www.reading.ac.uk/godiva2 http://ncwms.sf.net
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The blog (LabTrove) Web-based blogging tool specifically designed for the practising scientist Originally designed for lab chemist Collaboration tool for enabling discussions Blogs can be private or public Colleagues add comments and link blog posts together Version-controlled Nothing can be deleted, but can be updated Sophisticated metadata framework We added geo-tagging
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LabTrove Geo database Godiva2 sites RSS GeoRSS
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Illustrative use cases Postdoc/PhD student: Discover an interesting feature in a dataset Post a blog entry asking a question Colleague at a different institute Discovers others working on same dataset and/or same geographic area Discovers blog entry, posts explanatory comment PI/Manager: Views hot topics feed (most active discussions)
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Feature summary Create blog entries about different kinds of visualizations Chiefly map plots and animations so far Doesnt store any data: just metadata and links Can highlight a point of interest Whats going on at this location? Lots of metadata automatically captured User dataset, variable, plot type Geospatial and temporal context Posts can be filtered on this metadata Original visualization can be regenerated Proof of concept! (for now)
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Demo video: see http://blogs.blogmydata.org/projectblog/398/ New_demonstration_video.html http://blogs.blogmydata.org/projectblog/398/ New_demonstration_video.html
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Metadata captured automatically and used in filtering Click on screenshot to load data in Godiva2
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User feedback guided development Privacy controls essential We could give even more control in future Content is king Prototype system needs to contain interesting data! Animations difficult to handle but big attraction for users
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13 Future work Prototype was developed quickly: needs hardening Increase the number of plot types Vertical profiles, timeseries Improve playback of animations in browsers HTML5??? Improve use of filtering E.g. Who else is working on density anomalies in the North Atlantic? What are the hot topics of the last week? KML and GeoRSS output for all types of visualization E.g. for Google Earth overlays Finer-grained security?