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CSIG 08
Cyberinfrastructure Summer
Institute for Geoscientists
August 11-15, 2008
San Diego
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WELCOME !
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Acknowledgements
CSIG’08 Speakers/Instructors
• Margaret Smeekens
• Prof. Randy Keller, University
of Oklahoma
• Dr. Don Middleton, NCAR
• Dr. Peter Fox, NCAR
• Dr. Deborah Kilb, SIO/UCSD
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Prof. Ann Gates, UT El Paso
Dr. Sriram Krishnan, SDSC
Dr. Kai Lin, SDSC
Ashraf Memon, SDSC
Dr. Ilya Zaslavsky, SDSC
Tom Whitenack, SDSC
• Stuart Weir, UNAVCO
• Prof. Falko Kuester, UCSD
• Dr. David Nadeau,
SDSC/UCSD
• John Moreland, SDSC/UCSD
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Dr. Phil Maechlin, SCEC/USC
Prof. Ramon Arrowsmith, ASU
Chris Crosby, SDSC
Ilkay Altintas, SDSC
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Acknowledgements
GEON Team
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Margaret Banton
Sandeep Chandra
Chris Crosby
Kai Lin
Ashraf Memon
John Moreland
David Nadeau
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Viswanath Nandigam
Choonhan Youn
Randy Keller
Brad Wallet
Ramon Arrowsmith
Charles Meertens
Ann Gates
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Acknowledgements
• National Science Foundation
• CSIG has been funded each year as a supplement
to GEON, since 2004
(has already been funded for 2009)
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Schedule
• Monday – Introduction, Scientific Challenges, Examples of
Cyberinfrastructure from other projects/sciences
• Tuesday – Visualization Frameworks (and data issues)
• Wednesday – Service-Oriented Architecture and Web Services
• Thursday – GEON LiDAR Workflow (GLW)
• Friday – Related CI Resources, Tools, and Technologies
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LOGISTICS
• Webcasting and video archives
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INTRODUCTIONS
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Enabling Discoveries in the
Earth Sciences Through GEON
Chaitan Baru
SDSC/UCSD
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A Vision for Geoinformatics
From the
NSF Workshop on Envisioning a National
Geoinformatics System for the United States
Denver, March 2007
“…a future in which someone can sit at a terminal
and have easy access to vast stores of data of
almost any kind, with the easy ability to visualize,
analyze and model those data.”
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An Example: The GEON Portal
portal.geongrid.org
• GEON Search
• Workbench
• Dynamic map services, map integration
Geologic Map Integration
+/- a few hundred
million years
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GEON Portal
• Paleo database integration
• LiDAR data access and data processing
• SYNSEIS: Online access to
computational modeling system
• Gravity and Magnetic database for US
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Other Data Portal Examples
• EarthScope Data Portal
• Hydrologic Information System (HIS)
– Data Access System for Hydrology (DASH)
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Integrated Cyberinfrastructure System
Education and Training
Discovery & Innovation
Source: Dr. Deborah Crawford, Chair, NSF CI Working Committee
Application Domains
• Geosciences, Engineering,
Environmental Sciences, Physics,
Astronomy, Archaeology,
Neurosciences, Biomedicine, …
Development
Tools & Libraries
Domain-specific
Cybertools
(software)
Shared
Cybertools
(software)
Middleware Services
Hardware
Distributed Resources
(computation, storage,
communication, etc.)
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Cyberinfrastructure
• From NSF’s Cyberinfrastructure Vision for 21st
Century Discovery, www.nsf.gov/od/oci/ci-v7.pdf, July
20, 2006
“The comprehensive infrastructure needed to capitalize on dramatic
advances in information technology has been termed
cyberinfrastructure. Cyberinfrastructure integrates hardware for
computing, data and networks, digitally-enabled sensors,
observatories and experimental facilities, and an interoperable suite
of software and middleware services and tools. Investments in
interdisciplinary teams and cyberinfrastructure professionals with
expertise in algorithm development, system operations, and
applications development are also essential to exploit the full power
of cyberinfrastructure to create, disseminate, and preserve scientific
data, information, and knowledge…”
• pp40 of the report:
“In 1999, the PITAC released the seminal report ITR-Investing in
our Future, prompting new and complementary NSF investments in
CI projects, such as the Grid Physics Network (GriPhyN) and
international Virtual Data Grid Laboratory (iVDGL) and the
Geosciences Network, known as GEON.”
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Community Cyberinfrastructure Projects
Friendly Work-Facilitating Portals
Ocean Observing (ORION)
Ecological Observatories (NEON)
Hardware
Earthquake Engineering (NEES)
Middleware
Services
Geosciences (GEON)
Development
Tools & Libraries
Biomedical Informatics (BIRN)
Source: Prof. Mark Ellisman,
UC San Diego
High Enegy Physics (GriPhyN)
Authentication - Authorization – Auditing - Resource Discovery - Workflows Visualization - Analysis
Your Specific
Tools
& User Apps.
Shared Tools
ScienceDomains
Distributed Computing, Instruments and Data Resources
Portal-based Science Environments
Support for resource sharing and collaborations
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Virtual Organizations
• Multiple participants
• Distributed sites
• Participants are from different
“administrative domains”
• Policies, rules, systems of the VO may be
different than those of the participating
organizations
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GEON Background
• Initiated in 2002 as a 5-year NSF ITR (IT Research)
project
• Collaboration among 12 PI institutions and number of
other organizations
• Distributed network of GEON “nodes”
– Provides a standardized software platform
– Provides a machine outside the local environment (for hosting
data, software tools, and applications for remote access
– Can be centrally administered
• Funded now under the NSF Earth Sciences (EAR)
Geoinformatics program
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Geoinformatics
From David Lambert, NSF EAR/GEO
Presentation at GEON Annual Meeting, 2005
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Other Geoinformatics Efforts
• OneGeology.org
– International initiative of
geological surveys to create
dynamic geological map data
available via the web.
• USGS initiative
– Presentation by Dr. Linda
Gundersen, at Geoinformatics
2007, San Diego.
USGS Role in Geoinformatics
Fundamental: develop, maintain, make accessible:
 Long-term national and regional geologic, hydrologic,
biologic, and geographic databases
 Earth and planetary imagery
 Open-source models of the complex natural systems and
human interaction with that system
 Physical collections of earth materials, biologic materials,
reference standards, geophysical recordings, paper records.
 National geologic, biologic, hydrologic, and geographic
monitoring systems
 Standards of practice for the geologic, hydrologic, biologic,
and geographic sciences
Source: Presentation by Dr. Linda Gundersen, USGS, at Geoinformatics
2007, San Diego, CA.
USGS Role in Geoinfomatics
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All activities: Data creation, modeling,
monitoring, collections, standards etc. Must
be done in cooperation and collaboration
with the public and governmental,
academic, and private sector partners and
stakeholders.
A critical USGS role:
facilitate bringing communities together!
Source: Presentation by Dr. Linda Gundersen, USGS, at Geoinformatics
2007, San Diego, CA.
Data Collections versus
Communities of Practice
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Geoinformatics must evolve beyond the
accumulation of data, models, and standards to
become the framework for a community of practice
in the natural sciences.
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Etienne Wegner and Jean Lave coined the term
and developed the learning theory of communities
of practice – that we learn not only as individuals
but as communities. By engaging in communities
of practice we increase our capacity and innovation
as well as leverage our support for areas of interest.
Source: Presentation by Dr. Linda Gundersen, USGS, at Geoinformatics
2007, San Diego, CA.
Creativity, Learning, and Innovation
A community of practice is not merely a community
with a common interest. But are practitioners who
share experiences and learn from each other. They
develop a shared repertoire of resources:
experiences, stories, tools, vocabularies, ways of
addressing recurring problems. This takes time
and sustained interaction. Standards of practice
and reference materials will grow out of this. But
the critical benefits include: creating and
sustaining knowledge, leveraging of resources, and
rapid learning and innovation.
Source: Presentation by Dr. Linda Gundersen, USGS, at Geoinformatics
2007, San Diego, CA.
1000’s of National and Regional
Databases
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The National Map – topographic, elevation,
orthoimagery, transportation hydrography etc.
Geospatial One Stop-portal
MRDATA – Mineral Resources and Related
Data
The National Geologic Map Database
stnadardized community collection of
geologic mapping
National Water Information System NWISWeb
National Geochemical Survey Database
(PLUTO, NURE)
National Geophysical Database (aeromag,
gravity, aerorad)
Earthquake Catalogs
North American Breeding Bird Survey
National Vegetation/speciation maps
National Oil and Gas Assessment
Source:Inventory
Presentation by Dr. Linda Gundersen, USGS, at Geoinformatics
National Coal Quality
2007, San Diego, CA.
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Geoscience Information
Network
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A Use Case for GEON
• A user request of the form:
“For a given region (i.e. lat/long extent, plus
depth), return a 3D structural model with
accompanying physical parameters of density,
seismic velocities, geochemistry, and geologic
ages, using a cell size of 10km”
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Interoperability
• Data Interoperability
– Ability to discover, access, integrate data sets
– “Third-party”, heterogeneous, remote data
• Software Interoperability
– “Software as a service”
– Ability to discover services
– Ability to link data with services, and
“orchestrate” services
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Data interoperability onion
• System Interop
Social
Networks
– Approaches: e.g., ODBC,
JDBC,
Java, Web services, …
Semantics
– Purview of: Computer Science
• Syntactic
Syntax
Systems
– Approaches: Schema standards
– Purview of: Standards organizations, domain science
repositories, data archives
Social Networks
Semantics
Syntax
Systems
• Semantic
– Approaches: Controlled vocabularies, thesaurii, domain ontologies
– Purview of: Domain scientists
• Social Networks
– Approaches: recommendation systems
– Purview of: social networking software (CS and domain science, data driven)
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Software interoperability onion
• System Interop
– Approaches: e.g., REST, Web services
• Syntactic
– Approaches: e.g., SOAP, WSDL
• Semantic
Social Networks
Semantics
Syntax
Systems
– Approaches: Controlled vocabularies, thesaurii, domain ontologies
– Purview of: Domain scientists
• Social Networks
– Approaches: recommendation systems
– Purview of: social networking software
• Service orchestration via worflow systems