1. Metafor Year 3 Meeting, March 2011 Governance

2. Metafor Year 3 Meeting, March 2011 What does metafor leave behind? The CIM –UML –XSD –Vocbularies (mindmaps) Software –To Manipulate specific versions of the CIM Systems –Populated with instances of specific versions of the CIM

3. Metafor Year 3 Meeting, March 2011 UML and Vocabularies: Separation of Concerns Even amongst ourselves it's not often we know what we're talking about when we talk about the CIM, or the ontology … –Do we meen the UML, or –Do we mean the UML + the Mindmaps? It seems clear we need to make sure the legacy for the distinction is clear.

4. Metafor Year 3 Meeting, March 2011 A CF Analogy CF conventions for NetCDF have: – A slowly (too slowly maybe) varying part called the conventions, and –A fast moving part (the standard names). –The former is tightly governed (hard to make changes, the second lightly governed, easy to extend, following rules). Metafor should leave behind something similar: UML which can change slowly, and vocabularies which can be (relatively) easily updated and extended.

5. Metafor Year 3 Meeting, March 2011 The CIM V1.5 will be (is?) fixed during the duration of Metafor. V2.0 will be left behind –Arguably we (metafor) can govern the creation of V2.0, but I think we should use it as an exercise in governing the CIM “post” metafor Future versions of the CIM will clearly be SEPs (“someone elses's problem”), but:

6. Metafor Year 3 Meeting, March 2011 Two strands of new activity CIM Aware: Downscaling vocabularies Impact, Assessment Models ESMF, and others trying to describe coupling, with CIM and without. (All three likely to impact on CIM) CIM agnostic: INSPIRE currently trying to create a sensible O&M description of ensembles. WMO currently trying to create a sensible O&M description of forecasting. WRF Must bring these together, before divergence is uncontrollable!

7. Metafor Year 3 Meeting, March 2011 Proposal Create a new CF committee, with specific terms of reference which cover –The maintenance of a “standards document” which describes the formal UML model, and –The maintenance of the vocabulary lists which are necessary to populate that model. –Ensure that this committee is joined up with the WMO meteorology community. –Identify at least 0.5 FTE to continue governance BADC will do that at least for 2011/2012, longer if we can, but these are “Confucian Curse” times.

8. Metafor Year 3 Meeting, March 2011 Terms of Reference (1) The “Common information Model” committee will be responsible for the maintenance and development of standard descriptions of numerical experiments, earth system models, and simulations, comprising: –A formal CIM description (currently encoded in UML) which may be serialised in a number of ways (currently, at least GML). To do this, the CIM committee will have to govern a “metamodel” which provides rules for how to construct the model (currently that would describe how to use UML), as well as the UML model itself. –A set of terms and scientific options which provide controlled vocabularies for possible and actual earth system model configurations. The committee would normally delegate responsibility for these controlled vocabularies to a named individual (or set of named individuals) who could manage the day to day vocabulary maintenance and extension without recourse to the committee except where there is community disagreement.

9. Metafor Year 3 Meeting, March 2011 Terms of Reference (2) The membership of the committee should include: At least two representatives of –Major earth system modelling groups, –The Numerical weather prediction community (**) –Model simulation user communities unconnected to those who build and run models. –Model archive centres. ex officio: –The chair of the CF governance panel –A representative of the WMO Inter-Programme Expert Team on Metadata & Data Interoperability & a representative of WCRP WGCM –A representative of the IPCC DDC –A representative of any organisation providing 0.5 (or more) FTE towards supporting the work of the committee. –Three people who understand the model at a technical level. A committee member may fufill more than one of these roles. (** Remembering that the initial condition will be a CIM for ESM, but we need to evolve into this community, these two to be appointed *after* Metafor completes.)

10. Metafor Year 3 Meeting, March 2011 Terms of Reference (3) The committee shall elect a chair from time to time as necessary. The normal working of the committee shall be to receive electronic proposals for change, and to decline, accept, or recommend for resubmission, as appropriate via teleconference discussion. –Decisions with respect to proposals for changes to the controlled vocabulary will normally be carried out under delegated authority as described above. Normally the committee will attempt to decide upon proposals by consensus, but where that is impossible, all members will have one vote. A tied vote shall be considered to be a vote for the status quo. –Technical subcomimttee to vett proposals before appearing in front of the full committee.

11. Metafor Year 3 Meeting, March 2011 Will depend on Metafor leaving behind: An appropriate metamodel, which ideally ensures that the UML can be serialised not only in GML (Kristin's work), but also in OWL. A complete, fully documented, UML model. A complete, fully documented vocabulary set, along with a vocabulary server back end, and a management environment for interacting with those vocabularies –i.e. a mindmap interface for scientists, and –Infrastructure for the “manager” to update and propagate the vocabularies.

12. Metafor Year 3 Meeting, March 2011 Next Steps Formal proposal to CF governance panel Propose membership of new committee –Probably initially based on individuals from Metafor and Curator + extras according to ToR. Develop V2.0 CIM according to principles ( and in harmonisation with INSPIRE and OGC working group looking at O&M and ensembles – if timescales permit).

13. Metafor Year 3 Meeting, March 2011 Software All in open source repositories. We can either –a) leave it where it is (has open community access for read) –b) move it to an IS-ENES repository (ensure open community access). –Either way, we need to build a community around the software. (BNL: personally think this should not transition TO IS-ENES, needs to get wider community ownership, even if IS-ENES run the systems.) But we need to resource the establishment of the open source tools (just a website is not enough)

14. Metafor Year 3 Meeting, March 2011 Systems Should transition to IS-ENES and/or ExArchto run the systems. That we need to manage properly. –Recognising that some are integral to ESGF