Andrew Woolf

A semantic registry using a Feature Type Catalogue instead of ontologies to support spatial data infrastructures

The use of a semantically rich registry containing a Feature Type Catalogue (FTC) to represent the semantics of geographic feature types including operations, attributes and relationships between feature types is required to realise the benefits of Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDIs). Specifically, such information provides a more complete representation of the semantics of the concepts used in the SDI, and enables advanced navigation, discovery and utilisation of discovered resources. The presented approach creates an FTC implementation in which attributes, associations and operations for a given feature type are encapsulated within the FTC, and these conceptual representations are separated from the implementation aspects of the web services that may realise the operations in the FTC. This differs from previous approaches that combine the implementation and conceptual aspects of behaviour in a web service ontology, but separate the behavioural aspects from the static aspects of the semantics of the concept or feature type. These principles are demonstrated by the implementation of such a registry using open standards. The ebXML Registry Information Model (ebRIM) was used to incorporate the FTC described in ISO 19110 by extending the Open Geospatial Consortium ebRIM Profile for the Web Catalogue Service (CSW) and adding a number of stored queries to allow the FTC component of the standards‐compliant registry to be interrogated. The registry was populated with feature types from the marine domain, incorporating objects that conform to both the object and field views of the world. The implemented registry demonstrates the benefits of inheritance of feature type operations, attributes and associations, the ability to navigate around the FTC and the advantages of separating the conceptual from the implementation aspects of the FTC. Further work is required to formalise the model and include axioms to allow enhanced semantic expressiveness and the development of reasoning capabilities.

Information in environmental data grids

Providing homogeneous access (‘services’) to heterogeneous environmental data distributed across heterogeneous computing systems on a wide area network requires a robust information paradigm that can mediate between differing storage and information formats. While there are a number of ISO standards that provide some guidance on how to do this, the information landscape within domains is not well described. In this paper, we present an information taxonomy and two information components, which have been built for a specific application. These two components, one to aid data understanding and the other to aid data manipulation, are both deployed in the UK NERC DataGrid as described elsewhere.

Standards-based data interoperability in the climate sciences

Emerging developments in geographic information systems and distributed computing offer a roadmap towards an unprecedented spatial data infrastructure in the climate sciences. Key to this are the standards developments for digital geographic information being led by the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) technical committee on geographic information/geomatics (TC211) and the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC). These, coupled with the evolution of standardised web services for applications on the internet by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), mean that opportunities for both new applications and increased interoperability exist. These are exemplified by the ability to construct ISO-compliant data models that expose legacy data sources through OGC web services. This paper concentrates on the applicability of these standards to climate data by introducing some examples and outlining the challenges ahead. An abstract data model is developed, based on ISO standards, and applied to a range of climate data –both observational and modelled. An OGC Web Map Server interface is constructed for numerical weather prediction (NWP) data stored in legacy data files. A W3C web service for remotely accessing gridded climate data is illustrated. Challenges identified include the following: first, both the ISO and OGC specifications require extensions to support climate data. Secondly, OGC services need to fully comply with W3C web services, and support complex access control. Finally, to achieve real interoperability, broadly accepted community-based semantic data models are required across the range of climate data types. These challenges are being actively pursued, and broad data interoperability for the climate sciences appears within reach. Copyright

The NERC DataGrid services

This short paper outlines the key components of the NERC DataGrid: a discovery service, a vocabulary service and a software stack deployed both centrally to provide a data discovery portal, and at data providers to provide local portals and data and metadata services.

Integrating the Climate Science Modelling Language with geospatial software and services

Abstract Much consideration is rightly given to the design of metadata models to describe data. At the other end of the data-delivery spectrum much thought has also been given to the design of geospatial delivery interfaces such as the Open Geospatial Consortium standards, Web Coverage Service (WCS), Web Map Server and Web Feature Service (WFS). Our recent experience with the Climate Science Modelling Language shows that an implementation gap exists where many challenges remain unsolved. To bridge this gap requires transposing information and data from one world view of geospatial climate data to another. Some of the issues include: the loss of information in mapping to a common information model, the need to create ‘views’ onto file-based storage, and the need to map onto an appropriate delivery interface (as with the choice between WFS and WCS for feature types with coverage-valued properties). Here we summarise the approaches we have taken in facing up to these problems.

Data Grid discovery and Semantic Web technologies for the earth sciences

This paper describes scientific data discovery for the earth sciences in the context of data Grids and Grid computing. Requirements and use cases illustrate current challenges due to size, distribution, and minimal annotation of data. Semantics and the characterization of provenance in large data archives are discussed. The targeted community of users is also discussed. Solutions implemented by the Earth System Grid and the National Environment Research Council Data Grid include a prototype ontology, metadata schemas, search mechanisms, and discovery architectures. The use of Semantic Web technologies has facilitated the development of meaningful annotations of data content and opened the door to data discovery in federated systems.

A Linked Data Approach to Publishing Complex Scientific Workflows

Past data management practices in many fields of natural science, including climate research, have focused primarily on the final research output -- the research publication -- with less attention paid to the chain of intermediate data results and their associated metadata, including provenance. Data were often regarded merely as an adjunct to the publication, rather than a scientific resource in their own right. In this paper, we attempt to address the issues of capturing and publishing detailed workflows associated with the climate/research datasets held by the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia. To this end, we present a customisable approach to exposing climate research workflows for the effective re-use of the associated data, through the adoption of linked-data principles, existing widely adopted citation techniques (Digital Object Identifier) and data exchange mechanisms (Open Archives Initiative Object Reuse and Exchange).

AN INTEGRATED E-SCIENCE ENVIRONMENT FOR ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE

Current developments for an e-Science Environment for Environmental Science, integrating data discovery and retrieval, computation and visualisation will be presented. The paper will focus on three developments of the CLRC e-Science Centre: the Dataportal, the HPCPortal and the VisualisationPortal. The Dataportal technology is to be used e.g. for all (Central Laboratory of the Research Councils of the UK) CLRC departments, the Natural Environmental Research Council DataGrid and Environment from the Molecular level project. The HPCPortal will provide access to code libraries and compute resources on the UK Science Grid. The VisualisationPortal finally is to be used e.g. by the projects mentioned above and the GODIVA project to provide access to suitable visualisation tools. It is our aim to provide easy access and support for the usage of data, substantial computing and visualisation resources across Europe by using Grid technologies like grid services and Globus, via user configurable web access points (personal workbenches).

Towards Earth and Space Science digital infrastructures: network, computing and data services

Earth and Space scientists are engaged in integrating knowledge stemming from different disciplines about the constituent parts of the complex Sun Earth system with the objective of understanding its properties as a whole. Earth and Space system analysis is as real a challenge for information technology as it is for scientists. In fact, the scope and complexity of Earth and Space system investigations demand the formation of distributed, multidisciplinary collaborative teams. The development and deployment of advanced digital infrastructures (e.g. e-infrastructure and cyberinfrastructures) will support the needs of the Earth and Space Systems Science Community and facilitate multidisciplinary knowledge integration. Both the US and European premier scientific unions are recognising this the American Geophysical Union (AGU) has established an Earth and Space Sciences Informatics (ESSI) Focus group, and the European Geosciences Union (EGU) has recently created a new scientific division for ESSI. The EGU ESSI division is conceived as a European forum for the Earth and Space Systems Science multidisciplinary community, within the broader international framework of geospatial information technology. The ESSI division aims at facilitating the integration of information systems from different geoscience disciplines, addressing the heterogeneity that characterises their data and metadata models, protocols, interfaces, semantics and embedded knowledge. In order to achieve these objectives, it is important to promote the present best practice to scale from specific, monolithic and data-centric systems towards independent, modular and service-oriented infrastructures. This approach aims to provide scientists, researchers and decision makers with a persistent set of independent services and information that scientists can integrate into a range of more complex analyses. These infrastructures will support Earth and Space scientists to leverage the recent advances in information and communication technologies, including: Model Driven Architectures (MDA); Service-Oriented Architectures (SOA); semi-structured data model and encodings, and consequent infrastructures e.g. Internet, GRID and Cloud computing. There has been a steady increase in interest in the application of information technologies to the Earth and Space sciences, as evidenced by the substantial investment by science funding agencies such as the US National Science Foundation and EC Research & Development Framework Programmes. Considerable intellectual innovation is occurring as a result of data, services, information and knowledge sharing across traditional disciplinary and geographic boundaries. Several important international initiatives and programmes have been launched to cover this emerging multi-disciplinary field e.g. GEOSS, GMES, NSDI, INSPIRE, NFGIS, NEON and EuroGEOSS. Many others are in the planning stages and will likely be launched in the coming years. There is a clear need to report

The NERC Datagrid: enabling interoperable climate data resources

The NERC DataGrid (NDG) is a UK e-science project that provides discovery of, and virtualised access to, a wide variety of climate and earth system science data. We present an overview of key elements of the NDG architecture from a number of perspectives, from an enterprise viewpoint, to the relationship to key ISO standards, and to the underlying metadata structures. The discussion stresses the interoperability characteristics of the design, and introduces the latest experiments of interoperability with the NCAR community data portal, and plans for wider interoperability with the climate data archives held in the Earth system grid. Future initiatives, including the Big Data Analysis Network, are introduced.