GeoChronos: An On-line Collaborative Platform for Earth Observation Scientists

An On-line Collaborative Platform for Earth

Observation Scientists

Presented by Cameron Kiddle

Research Fellow, Grid Research Centre

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Outline Overview Project Team Virtual Organization Challenges Solutions Progress/Status

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Overview GeoChronos is an on-line platform

For: Earth Observation Scientists

Facilitating: Collaboration between scientists Data access, management and sharing Application access, management and sharing

Leveraging: Web 2.0 and social networking technologies Semantic Web technologies Cloud computing technologies

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Project Team

Dr. Arturo Sanchez-AzofeifaUniversity of Alberta

Dr. John GamonUniversity of Alberta

Dr. Benoit RivardUniversity of Victoria

Dr. Rob SimmondsUniversity of Calgary

Prinicipal Investigators

Project Coordination Platform Development Domain Scientists

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Virtual Organization

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Collaboration Challenges Familiarity with new tools for collaboration Keeping all interested parties in the loop Finding related work and researchers Keeping up to date with current research Collaboration while working in the field

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Data Challenges Acquisition of data

Many different data sources Different regulations/mechanisms for accessing data Lack of automation Finding the right data

Managing data Scattered and unorganized data Inadequate tools for recording/maintaining metadata

Data without metadata is meaningless Lack of suitable metadata standards Validation of metadata

Tracking provenance of data Pre-processing of data

Raw data typically cannot be directly analyzed Significant amount of time spent preparing data for analysis Lack of automation

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Application Challenges Access to software available in research lab while in

field or other locations Installing, configuring and updating software System dependencies of software Awareness and suitability of available software Sharing applications Getting help in using applications Sharing results and getting feedback Co-location of data and applications

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Collaboration Solutions

Social networking portal Facebook (1st prototype) Ning (2nd prototype) Elgg (Current)

Social networking services Blogs Tags Media/document sharing Wikis Friends/contacts Groups Discussions Message boards Status News Feeds

http://geochronos.org/

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Data Solutions Data Acquisition

Automated acquisition of satellite, meteorological and spectral data

Data Management iRODS (Integrated Rule-Oriented Data System) Metadata management

RDF (Resource Description Framework) OWL (Web Ontology Language)

Data Processing and Analysis Automated data workflows

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Application Solutions

On-line/on-demand access to scientific applications using VNC

Java Web Start-based VNC viewer (NRC)

Connections tunneled over SSH via gateway node

User storage space Share sessions and data

with other users Restrict access to

applications using groups

Interactive Application Service (IAS)

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Cloud Computing Infrastructure

Developed by the GRC (in collaboration with HP Labs)

Enables dynamic allocation and management of virtual machines and cloud services

Running on HP Labs Data Centre at the UofC

Similar to Eucalyptus, Nimbus and OpenNebula but has greater focus on scheduling capabilities and efficient image management

Automated Service Provisioning ENvironment (ASPEN)

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Progress/Current Status Collaboration

June 2008 – Facebook-based portal (prototype) Sept 2008 – Ning-based portal (prototype) Jan 2009 – Elgg 1.2-based portal (beta) Apr 2009 – Elgg 1.5-based portal (development)

Data June 2008 – MODIS satellite data repository (prototype) Apr 2009 – Spectral library (initial design)

Applications Nov 2008 – Interactive Application Service (prototype) Jan 2009 – Interactive Application Service (beta)

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Contact Information

Cameron [email protected]://pages.cspc.ucalgary.ca/~kiddlec/

http://geochronos.org/

http://grid.ucalgary.ca/ http://ceos.ualberta.ca/ http://www.cybera.ca/