Closing the Gap Between Global Environmental Sensing Needs and Cyber Infrastructure Tools Jim Gray Jeff Burch Mark Ellisman Miron Livny David Maidment Phillip Papadopolis

Premise: 5 year horizon In the next 5 years –Many CI tools will mature driven by commerce, entertainment, … –Some things will not What requirements are unique to Global Environmental Sensing and so are unlikely to be served by others? Experiments & Instruments Simulations facts answers questions Literature Other Archives facts

What is Unique Multiple data sources: not just one instrument –Satellite data (remote sensing) –Atmospheric, aquatic weather, temperature, …. –Geology, seismology, hydrology, oceanography…. –Ecology, species, fauna, … –Land use, demographics,… –Model, simulation data Coupling among your systems: you can hang together or hang separately Strong spatial-temporal component –Maps –3D –Time – long baseline analysis Your unique vocabularies, instruments, and datasets.

Recommendation #1 Spend the next year trying to answer the question whats unique and whats similar. Build the requirements Find commonalities among the observatories so that you can pool your resources. Link to other observatories so that you can benefit from their work

Recommendation #2 At a Minimum, You Must Capture the bits (level 0 data) Curate the bits (document how they were collected document what they mean) Preserve the bits (for >30 years) Provide access to the bits. You aim to do much more but… dont mess this up! A LIMS The O and S words Controlled Vocabulary Replicated File Systems & DataBases Portal & Web Service

What You Get For Free (in 5 years) 10x from Moores law Naming Authentication services, authorization styles. Byte Movers & High-speed Internet Working and interoperable web services. Byte Storage & Generic database systems Simple workflow systems Some vocabulary tools (some O and S stuff) Generic data mining tools Generic visualization tools Small-scale LIMS

What Can Cyber Infrastructure (and the IT ecosystem) Do for You? Can do: –Generic Concepts –Generic Tools Cant do: –Science –Define your vocabulary (the O and S words) –Your Services –Integration of your stuff (building your portals)

Advice Leverage commonality among observatories. Encourage curation tools to document data capture, data meaning to track data lineage Fund Curation & Preservation as part of projects Not an un-funded mandate Build real prototypes in new style, it appears current efforts continue the My Data culture. Treat data from public infrastructure as public. Like NIH: Publish data with research. Continue building dashboards and workbenches enables data federation & integration tools encourages tool-builders

Closing the Gap Between Global Environmental Sensing Needs and Cyber Infrastructure Tools Jim Gray Jeff Burch Mark Ellisman Miron Livny David Maidment Phillip Papadopolis