Virtual Observatory Developments

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Virtual Observatory Developments

• www.egy.org
• Peter Fox
• NCAR

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Role

• Facilitate, inform, stimulate, encourage, and
  promote
• Modern data access and services (e-Science for
  Geoscience)
• Responsible data stewardship
• Cooperation among bodies/initiatives to reduce
  duplication and proliferation of standards, and
  share expertise
• Establishment of virtual observatories throughout
  the geosciences
• Establishment of criteria to determine optimal
  and minimum funding for data activities
  supporting research
• eGY also serves to provide a link between
  programs with related data and information
  requirements - IPY, IHY, IYPE, and initiatives
  such as GEOSS and beyond

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eGY Embraces and Extends IGY Principles

• International cooperation and data sharing
• Universal access to data and information
• Timely and convenient access to data
• Global, cross-disciplinary scope
• Data preservation
• Capacity building, especially in developing
  countries
• Education, public outreach, information for
  decision making

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Diversity, Integration, Size,

• Not just large (well organized, long-lived,
  well-funded) projects/ programs want to make
  their data available, individuals as well
• Data policies highly variable or non-existent
  affects users
• How can data be managed to solve challenging
  scientific or societal problems without the
  continued need for a scientist to know every
  detail of complex data management systems?
• Scientific data repositories
• Most data still created in a manner to simplify
  generation, not access or use
• Very diverse organization of data files,
  directories, metadata, emails, etc.
• Source/origin management is driven by
  meta-mechanisms for integration and
  interoperability (but still need performance)
• Virtual Observatories
• Data Grids
• Increasing realization need management for all
  forms of data, I.e. virtual data products are
  becoming the norm
• Size matters personal data management is as big,
  or a bigger problem as source data management

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Shifting the Burden from the Userto the Provider
(with the help of VOs)
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Virtual Observatories - Geo

• Make data and tools quickly and easily accessible
  to a wide audience.
• Operationally, virtual observatories need to find
  the right balance of data/model holdings, portals
  and client software that researchers can use
  without effort or interference as if all the
  materials were available on his/her local
  computer using the users preferred language
  i.e. appear to be local and integrated

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Early days of VxOs - alas there shall be more
than one!
VO2
VO3
VO1
DBn
DB2
DB3

DB1
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The Astronomy approach data-types as a service
Limited interoperability

• VOTable
• Simple Image Access Protocol
• Simple Spectrum Access Protocol
• Simple Time Access Protocol

VO App2
VO App3
VO App1
Open Geospatial Consortium Web Feature,
Coverage, Mapping Service Sensor Web
Enablement Sensor Observation, Planning,
Analysis Service use the same approach
VO layer
DBn
DB2
DB3

DB1
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Ability to quickly plot data to assess
suitability, quality, and produce a quick copy
with some customization for a preliminary
study. Graphics also require data
management. Numerous VOs in this community
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VO API
Web Serv.
VO Portal
Query, access and use of data

• Mediation Layer
• Ontology - capturing concepts of Parameters,
  Instruments, Date/Time, Data Product (and
  associated classes, properties) and Service
  Classes
• Maps queries to underlying data
• Generates access requests for metadata, data
• Allows queries, reasoning, analysis, new
  hypothesis generation, testing, explanation, etc.

Semantic mediation layer - VSTO - low level
Metadata, schema, data
DBn
DB2
DB3

DB1
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Data grids, portals

• Earth System Grid (ESG) serving coupled climate
  system model data to a registered community of
  4000 (July 2007)
• 220 TB, 25 TB delivered in 2005
• Data grid based on OPeNDAP-g, subsetting,
  aggregation, bulk file transfers
• Since Dec. 2004, for the 4th assessment - the
  ESG/IPCC clone portal had 28TB published (66,000
  files) 650 users/projects, with gt 428,000 files
  downloaded, 100TB (200GB/day)
• gt 250 research papers
• Gearing up for 5th assessment 2010-2012

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EARTHSCOPE, IOOS (Ocean.US), ORION, IRIS, NEON,
Cleaner, CUAHSI, sensor web/ networks, NPOESS,
GEOSS, all VO-like
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But .. Data has Lots of Audiences
More Strategic
Less Strategic
From Why EPO?, a NASA internal report on
science education, 2005
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Data is Important in Science Educationand
non-expert situations!!

• Data is a critical component for understanding
  how science works. With it, we can
• Design and conduct scientific investigations
• Understand the quality of data and the role of
  uncertainty in results
• Focus on quantitative analysis and reasoning
• Explore tools for visual representation
• Virtual Observatories provide new mechanisms for
  collecting, manipulating, and aggregating data.
  They also provide the opportunity for new kinds
  of student and non-expert experiences.

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What is a Non-Specialist Use Case?
Someone should be able to query a virtual
observatory without having specialist knowledge
Teacher accesses internet goes to An Educational
Virtual Observatory and enters a search for
Aurora.
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What should the User Receive?
Teacher receives four groupings of search
results 1) Educational materials
http//www.meted.ucar.edu/topics_spacewx.php and
http//www.meted.ucar.edu/hao/aurora/ 2)
Research, data and tools mediated for them via
VOs, knows to search for brightness, or green/red
line emission 3) Did you know? Aurora is a
phenomena of the upper terrestrial atmosphere
(ionosphere) also known as Northern Lights 4) Did
you mean? Aurora Borealis or Aurora Australis,
etc.
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Developments for Virtual Observatories

• Scaling to large numbers of data providers
• Sustainability
• Crossing disciplines and beyond science use
• Data quality
• Branding and attribution (where did this data
  come from and who gets the credit, is it the
  correct version, is this an authoritative
  source?)
• Provenance/derivation (propagating key
  information as it passes through a variety of
  services, processing algorithms, )
• Security, access to resources, policy enforcement
• Interoperability at a variety of levels (3)

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Summary/ Discussion

• The VO paradigm in is wide-spread use in Earth
  and Space Sciences
• There is an active community meeting,
  publishing, developing, implementing, i.e. they
  are organized and many are collaborating
• Standards and practices are being developed, and
  leveraged from other sources (IVoA, SPASE, )
• Successful implementations in production and use
  (some even have evaluations)
• New science is being enabled and performed
• There are active (funding) programs at the agency
  level

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http//www.voig.net/ (voig_at_voig.net)