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

Outline
Overview
Project Team
Virtual Organization
Challenges
Solutions
Progress/Status

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

Project Team Dr. Arturo Sanchez-Azofeifa University of Alberta Dr. John Gamon University of Alberta Dr. Benoit Rivard University of Victoria Dr. Rob Simmonds University of Calgary Prinicipal Investigators Project Coordination Platform Development Domain Scientists

Virtual Organization

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

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

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

Collaboration Solutions
Social networking portal
Facebook (1 st prototype)
Ning (2 nd prototype)
Elgg (Current)
Social networking services
Blogs
Tags
Media/document sharing
Wikis
Friends/contacts
Groups
Discussions
Message boards
Status
News Feeds
http://geochronos.org/

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

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)

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)

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)

Contact Information Cameron Kiddle [email_address] http://pages.cspc.ucalgary.ca/~kiddlec/ http://geochronos.org/ http://grid.ucalgary.ca/ http://ceos.ualberta.ca/ http://www.cybera.ca/

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

by Cameron Kiddle on Apr 21, 2009

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