An On-line Collaborative Platform for Earth Observation Scientists

An on-line platform For:

Earth Observation Scientists Facilitating:

Collaboration between scientists Application access, management and sharing Data access, management and sharing

Leveraging: Web 2.0 and social networking technologies Cloud computing technologies Semantic Web technologies

Funded by: CANARIE - Network Enabled Platform (NEP-1) program Cybera

(http://geochronos.org/)

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Solutions Portal rich with social networking features

Tags, bookmarks, profiles, blogs, wikis Friends/contacts, groups Discussions, message boards, calendars Status, activity feeds

Technology Portal built on top of a social networking platform

Initial prototype built in Facebook (http://www.facebook.com) Secondary prototype built on white label social networking platform Ning

(http://www.ning.com) Current portal built on open source white label social networking platform Elgg

(http://www.elgg.org) Next Steps

Plan to keep using Elgg platform and upgrade as new versions released Develop new Elgg plugins as needed

i.e., plugins for more easily sharing publications and presentations

Collaboration

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Dashboard

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Groups

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Solutions Interactive Application Service (IAS)

On-line, on-demand access to scientific applications Share application sessions and data with other users

Technology IAS is hosted on top of a cloud computing platform

Use ASPEN (http://grid.ucalgary.ca/projects/DataCentre/) which can dynamically provision virtual machines to host applications based on user demand

Next Steps Batch processing and automated workflow services

Handle longer running data processing tasks and simulations Automate data workflows involving data acquisition and

transformation of data into different data products more suitable for use by scientists (i.e., mosaic, reproject and subset MODIS data)

Applications

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Application Catalogue

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Interactive Application Service

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Solutions Spectral Libraries

Store, share and browse spectral data View spectral plots, metadata, ancillary data and maps Manage and generate metadata for spectra Create and share metadata schemas

Technology iRODS (http://www.irods.org/) for data storage/management Semantic Web technologies such as RDF (Resource

Description Framework) to link/relate data Next Steps

Generalization of spectral library solution Acquire, store, manage, browse and share other types of data

MODIS and other satellite data Flux tower and phenology tower data Meteorological data Other data

Data

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Spectral Library - Browse

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Spectral Library - Metadata

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Portal Usage Over 70 users from Europe, South America and

North America Used at IAI International Wireless Sensor

Networking Summer School in Edmonton in July 2009 (~40 participants)

On-going usage by Tropi-Dry community for collaboration and sharing documents

Slowly opening up portal to different communities of users as development progresses

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Apr 21, 2009 - CANARIE NEP-1 Synergy Workshop (Winnipeg)

Jun 22, 2009 - SpecNet Workshop (Lethbridge) Jun 24-26, 2009 – Meeting of the Collaborative

Research Network II (CRN2) and Small Grant Program for the Human Dimensions (SGP-HD) Principal Investigators (Montevideo, Uruguay)

Jul 6-18, 2009 - IAI International Wireless Sensor Networking Summer School (Edmonton)

Aug 15, 2009 – Elgg Camp (Boston) Oct 14, 2009 – Summit 09 (Banff)

Presentations/Demonstrations

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R. Curry, C. Kiddle and R. Simmonds. Social Networking and Scientific Gateways. To appear in Proceedings of the Grid Computing Environments Workshop, Portland, OR, November 20, 2009.

N. Markatchev, R. Curry, C. Kiddle, A. Mirtchovski, R. Simmonds and T. Tan. A Cloud-based Interactive Application Service. To appear in Proceedings of the 5th IEEE International Conference on e-Science, Oxford, UK, December 9-11, 2009.

J. A. Gamon, C. Kiddle, R. Curry, N. Markatchev, G. Pastorello Jr., B. Rivard, G. A. Sanchez-Azofeifa, R. Simmonds and T. Tan. GeoChronos: An On-line Collaborative Platform for Earth Observation Scientists. To appear in Proceedings of the AGU Fall Meeting, San Francisco, CA, December 14-18, 2009. (Abstract)

Publications

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Project Team

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Dr. Arturo Sanchez-AzofeifaUniversity of Alberta

Dr. John GamonUniversity of Alberta

Dr. Benoit RivardUniversity of Alberta

Dr. Rob SimmondsUniversity of Calgary

Prinicipal Investigators

Project Coordination Platform Development Domain Scientists

Virtual Organization

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Contact Information

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http://geochronos.org/info@geochronos.org

http://grid.ucalgary.ca/ http://ceos.ualberta.ca/ http://www.cybera.ca/