An On-line Collaborative Platform for Earth Observation Scientists John Gamon Cameron Kiddle Arturo Sanchez-Azofeifa Roger Curry Benoit Rivard Nayden Markatchev Gilberto Zonta Pastorello Jr. Rob Simmonds Arie Croitoru Tingxi Tan
Jul 06, 2015
An On-line Collaborative Platform for Earth Observation Scientists
John Gamon Cameron KiddleArturo Sanchez-Azofeifa Roger CurryBenoit Rivard Nayden Markatchev Gilberto Zonta Pastorello Jr. Rob Simmonds Arie Croitoru Tingxi Tan
An on-line platform for Earth Observation Scientists
Facilitating: Collaboration between scientists Application access, management and sharing Data access, management and sharing
Leveraging: Web 2.0 and social networking technologies Cloud computing technologies Semantic Web technologies
Funded by: CANARIE - Network Enabled Platform (NEP-1) program Cybera
(http://geochronos.org/)
AGU 091214 2
Motivation Scientific Gateways
Aim to enable collaboration and transparent access to data and computational resources
Social Networking Can enhance collaboration capabilities around data
and applications – “Facebook for Scientists” Facebook Widely adopted
> 300 million users (50% log on to Facebook on any given day) > 1 billion chat messages per day > 2 billion photos, 14 million videos uploaded per month > 350 thousand applications on Facebook Platform
AGU 091214 3
Based around “Groups” with common interests Technology
Portal built on top of a social networking platform Elgg (http://www.elgg.org) Tags, bookmarks, profiles, blogs, wikis Friends/contacts, groups Discussions, message boards, calendars Status, activity feeds
Interactive Applications Cloud Computing
Collaboration
AGU 0912144
Dashboard
AGU 0912145
“Groups” within GeoChronos
AGU 0912146
Groups - Example: Wireless Sensor Network Summer School
AGU 0912147
Interactive Application Service (IAS) On-line, on-demand access to scientific applications Share application sessions and data with other users
Hosted on a cloud computing platform Use ASPEN (http://grid.ucalgary.ca/projects/DataCentre/) dynamically provision virtual machines to host applications
Batch processing and automated workflow services (Work in Progress) Handle longer running data processing tasks and simulations Automate data workflows involving data acquisition and
transformation of data into different data products more suitable for use by scientists (e.g., mosaic, reproject and subset MODIS data)
Applications
AGU 0912148
Application Catalogue
AGU 0912149
Interactive Application Service (IAS) Example - TIMESAT
AGU 09121410
Technology iRODS (http://www.irods.org/) for data
storage/management Semantic Web technologies such as RDF (Resource
Description Framework) to link/relate data Examples
Spectral Libraries Store, share and browse spectral data View spectral plots, metadata, ancillary data and maps Manage and generate metadata for spectra Create and share metadata schemas
Generalization of spectral library solution for other types of data (work in progress)
Data
AGU 09121411
Spectral Library – Browse Spectra
AGU 09121412
Spectral Library – View Metadata
AGU 09121413
Vegetation Spectral Library
AGU 09121414
Example courtesySantonu Goswami, Univ. Texas, El Paso
Vegetation Library – Metadata
AGU 09121415
Spectral Library – Ancillary data
AGU 09121416
Example courtesySantonu Goswami, Univ. Texas, El Paso
Spectral Library – Location Map
AGU 09121417
Portal Usage Over 70 users from Europe, South America and
North America Used at IAI International Wireless Sensor
Networking Summer School in Edmonton in July 2009 (~40 participants)
On-going usage by Tropi-Dry community for collaboration and sharing documents
Slowly opening up portal to different communities of users as development progresses
AGU 09121418
Goal – “Virtual Organizations”
AGU 09121419
Project Team
AGU 09121420
Dr. Arturo Sanchez-AzofeifaUniversity of Alberta
Dr. John GamonUniversity of Alberta
Dr. Benoit RivardUniversity of Alberta
Dr. Rob SimmondsUniversity of Calgary
Prinicipal Investigators
Project Coordination Platform Development Domain Scientists