R.S. Weigel Department of Computational and Data Sciences

The Virtual Radiation Belt Observatory (ViRBO) and tools

for radiation belt sciencehttp://virbo.org/

R.S. WeigelDepartment of Computational and

Data SciencesGeorge Mason University, Fairfax,

Virginia

ContributorsSoftware * Eric Kihn (NOAA/NGDC, ViRBO Web and API) * Mikhail Zhizhin (RFO, ViRBO Web and API) * Dmitry Mishin (RFO, ViRBO Web and API) * Dmitry Kokovin (RFO, ViRBO Web and API) * Jeremy Faden (Cottage Systems, Autoplot) Data * Dan Baker (CU/LASP, Data and metadata) * Sebastian Boudier (Onera, Data calibration) * Janet Green (NOAA/SEC, Data and metadata) * Shri Kanekal (CU/LASP, Data and metadata) * Reiner Friedel (LANL, Data and calibration) * Paul O'Brien (Aerospace, Data and metadata)

The Heliophysics Data Environment

Outline• What is a VxO?• Goal of VO effort• Where to start• Relevance of VO effort to

Scientist• Steps to create VO environment• Needed services• ViRBO

What is a VxO

• Virtual Observatory where x represents a domain such as thermosphere/ionosphere or radiation belt

• For a given community, a VxO provides– A comprehensive list of available data– Community-specific services on data– Connections to other VxOs with relevant

services

Goal of VO effort• “VOs should make ‘standard’ scientific research

much more efficient.”  [Roberts et al., 2005]

• Rate of science output must keep up with rate of potential science output given amount of available data

• The framework which is used must allow for this

• Requires improvements in:search interfacesanalysis visualizationaccess communication

• … all parts of the chain from instrument or model output to end user must continuously improve.

History• In (funded) development for about 3 years• A fundamental change in the data

approach• Virtual Observatories for Radiation Belt,

Thermosphere/Ionosphere, Magnetosphere, Solar, and Heliosphere.

• Newer services include an event list manager, waves, and an energetic particles.

Where to start

• Look at http://vspo.gsfc.nasa.gov/• Key function: High-level pointers to

known data sets.• If you know of a data set that you

can’t find a reference to there, let them know.

• For more detailed information and services, VSPO will return pointers to relevant Virtual Observatory.

Relevance to Scientist

• Many of us have become data managers and solve similar problems do not depend on science specialty.

• We build ad-hoc solutions• If you have a problem, ask if it is cross-

domain. – If it is, there is probably another person or VO

working on a similar problem. There is usually potential for leveraging effort.

• Example: Event list• Example: Web browser visualization

– Identify and develop cross-cutting services. They eventually become “core” services.

Steps to create VO environment

1. Describe the data in a standard format (SPASE; http://spase-group.org/). Primary VxO activity in past 3 years. If you know of a data product that does not have associated metadata, tell a VO.

2. Create services3. Connect services

Steps to create VO environment

1. Describe the data in a standard format (SPASE; http://spase-group.org/). Primary VxO activity in past 3 years. If you know of a data product that does not have associated metadata, tell a VO.

2. Create services3. Connect services

Key Concept

•Everything should be viewed as a service

Example Services

• CCMC – Community Coordinated Modeling Center

• VMR – Will add services to CCMC data

• SSCWeb – Orbit calculations• ViRBO - L* calculations (using

SSCWeb data)

Needed Services, Tools, and Roles

• Metadata– Creators– Standard– Query– Edit– Management

• Data– Creators– Ingestion service (with

versioning!)

• Data Base– API– General– Mass store and backup– Fast Cache (Content

delivery service)– Filter service

• Visualization– Pre-computed– Static and on demand– Interactive and

dynamic

ViRBO [http://virbo.org/]

• Breaking the VO paradigm in many ways (not just connecting services and creating metadata)

• Improved high-level tools and services are fine, but first– Increase data accessibility– Increase amount of available data

• We have:– Created many climatological data sets– Simplified access to many existing data sets.– Creating a time series server– See virbo.org for more …

Data [http://virbo.org/]

Future and existing services

– L and L* data base– L-sort plots– Fly-through AP-8/AE-8 and AP-9/AE-9– Hosting SVN for AP-9/AE-9

development– Hosting meeting notes and documents– Work with RBSP to develop or connect

services– Many more …

ViRBO Current Projects

•VxOware•Autoplot•Time Series Server

VxOwareNotes: http://vxoware.org

Implementation: http://virbo.org/meta

A tool for metadata management

VxOware

• For all aspects of managing XML-based scientific metadata

• User accounts with different privileges• Edit/submit metadata via browser and with

command line tools• Queries of many types• Federations• Comment, Link, and Tag metadata• Revision history• Transforms on query output

Autoplot[http://autoplot.org]

• A browser for data on the web