1. How Environmental Informatics is Preparing Us for the Era of Big Data AGU FM 2013 GC11F-01 December 09, 2013, MW 3001 Peter Fox; pfox@cs.rpi.edu, @taswegian –pfox@cs.rpi.edu Tetherless World Constellation Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute *also Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

2. The Planet is Under Pressure 2 Future Earth Research for global sustainability photos: www.dawide.com

3. Climate Science at Scale

4. ~ 2009© GEO Secretariat The Future for Earth Science: A Global Earth Observation System of Systems 2013 OSTP plan for Civil Earth Observations

5. Global Change Information System (GCIS) 5 Vision: A unified web based source of authoritative, accessible, usable, and timely information about climate and global change for use by scientists, decision makers, and the public.

6. National Climate Assessment 2009 http://nca2009.globalchange.gov 6 AND THEN CLIMATE-GATE HAPPENED!

7. Traceable accounts – assembled provenance “… prepare a summary ‘traceable account’ (a few sentences to a paragraph) that describes the main factors that contributed to the conclusion and level of confidence” “In addition to providing a summary traceable account, use the appropriate term below in a parenthetical phrase following the finding to convey to readers the level of confidence associated with the finding”

8. Provenance Concept Model actedOnBehalf ENTITY AGENT wasAttributedTo wasAssociatedWith wasInformedBy wasDerivedFrom wasGeneratedBy used startedAtTime, endedAtTime ACTIVITY Diagram from W3C PROV group and Ivan Herman

9. Methodologies Use cases –requirements Stakeholders Distributed authority Access control Ontologies Maintaining Identity Courtesy: Fox and McGuinness.

10. One of Many Use Cases Name Discover and visit data center website of dataset used to generate report figure. Goal The NCA Report reader sees a figure and wants to know where the data came from. Summary A reader of the NCA is browsing the content via the website. He/she sees a figure and wants to know where the data came from. A reference to the publication in which the figure originated appears in the figure caption. Selecting the link to the source publication displays a page of information about the publication including, if available, the publication DOI. The page also includes references to the datasets cited in the publication. Following each of dataset reference links presents a page of information about the dataset, including links back to the agency/data center webpage describing the dataset in more detail and making the actual data available for order or download. Actors Primary Actor - reader of the NCA Preconditions Reader is viewing the NCA online report Post Conditions Reader visits the data center dataset website Normal Flow 1)System is presenting the NCA report to the reader in a web site. Presentation includes report figure with caption that includes reference to source publication. 2)Reader selects publication reference in figure caption 3)System displays information about publication, including DOI (if available). 4)Publication information includes publication dataset citations. 5)Reader selects a dataset cited by the publication. 6)System displays information about dataset including links to agency / data center webpages where more information and (potentially) data download links are available. 7)Reader selects the data center link and is redirected to data center dataset webpage. Discover and visit data center website of dataset used to generate report figure.

11. Assessment links to information 11

12. Traceable accounts… 12 Magic here !

13. Under the hood – a graph 13

14. Key Message & A Traceable Account

15. Science ecosystems These elements are what enable anyone to explore/ confirm/ deny their research (or other) ideas and discuss/ collaborate! Accountability ProofExplanationJustificationVerifiability ‘Transparency’ -> Translucency Trust Identity Citability Integrateability

16. What is different here? Modern informatics enables a new approach. In contrast to nearly all-existing technical-based approaches, informatics starts with the use case. Instead of building successive layers of technology from the low (data) levels up -- in hopes they will be used -- the practice of informatics determines what questions people want to ask, and what tasks need to be performed. It works from the upper levels down to meet (and often build or adapt) the underlying and evolving technical infrastructure.

17. Be not afraid of informatics Thanks: pfox@cs.rpi.edu, @taswegianpfox@cs.rpi.edu

18. Coordinates Federal research to better understand and prepare the nation for global change Prioritizes and supports cutting edge scientific work in global change Assesses the state of scientific knowledge and the Nation’s readiness to respond to global change Communicates research findings to inform, educate, and engage the global community The Program: U.S. Global Change Research Program 18

19. Large Marine Eco- systems

20. 20 Progression after progression ITCyber Infrastru cture Cyber Informatics Core Informatics Science Informatics, aka Xinformatics Science, Societal Benefit Areas Informatics Any application can be on the far right E.g. Ecosystem Health Then Informatics == How it is pieced together Functional requirements