Stefano Nativi

Earth Science Infrastructures Interoperability: The Brokering Approach

For disciplinary and domain applications, systems interoperability largely deals with the adoption of agreed technologies, standards, specifications and interfaces with a disciplinary/domain service bus or means of information exchange, if available. However, multi-disciplinary efforts make more complex demands on the type of systems and arrangements needed to support cross-domain activities. Thus, interoperability among diverse disciplinary and domain systems must be pursued adopting more flexible and sustainable approaches. This paper discusses the challenges for multi-disciplinary interoperability. The recent Brokering approach is introduced; this solution aims at interconnecting the heterogeneous disciplinary and domain service buses, avoiding the imposition of any federated or common specification. It can deliver a range of services such as discovery and access through a Broker Framework. The Brokering approach has been successfully introduced by the EuroGEOSS research project and recently adopted by the GEOSS Common Infrastructure (GCI). US NSF EarthCube initiative also has recognized the importance of brokering for its reference architecture. The GI-* technology, empowering the EuroGEOSS and the GCI brokering frameworks, is presented and discussed.

Big Data Analytics for Earth Sciences: the EarthServer approach

Big Data Analytics is an emerging field since massive storage and computing capabilities have been made available by advanced e-infrastructures. Earth and Environmental sciences are likely to benefit from Big Data Analytics techniques supporting the processing of the large number of Earth Observation datasets currently acquired and generated through observations and simulations. However, Earth Science data and applications present specificities in terms of relevance of the geospatial information, wide heterogeneity of data models and formats, and complexity of processing. Therefore, Big Earth Data Analytics requires specifically tailored techniques and tools. The EarthServer Big Earth Data Analytics engine offers a solution for coverage-type datasets, built around a high performance array database technology, and the adoption and enhancement of standards for service interaction (OGC WCS and WCPS). The EarthServer solution, led by the collection of requirements from scientific communities and international initiatives, provides a holistic approach that ranges from query languages and scalability up to mobile access and visualization. The result is demonstrated and validated through the development of lighthouse applications in the Marine, Geology, Atmospheric, Planetary and Cryospheric science domains.

Discovery, Mediation, and Access Services for Earth Observation Data

The international research community involved in the GMES, INSPIRE, and GEOSS initiatives is actively pursuing the specification of information and service oriented solutions for geospatial data interoperability. A prominent interoperability issue pertains to discovery services. From an information technology point of view, the challenge is to implement interoperable discovery services for data and processing resources that are collected and managed using multidisciplinary standards and tools. We have designed and experimented a new, improved model and technology for the discovery of geospatial resources: an advanced catalog service featuring additional functionalities like mediation and asynchronous distribution. Besides, the described solution addresses another well-recognized issue: the integration of discovery and access services for complex resources-such as EO datasets.

RESTful implementation of geospatial services for Earth and Space Science applications

Abstract In the recent years, Representational State Transfer (REST) has been proposed as the architectural style for the World Wide Web. REST promises of scalability and simple deployment of Web Services seem to be particularly appealing for Earth and Space Science (ESS) applications. In fact, most of the available solutions for geospatial data sharing, applying standard interoperability specifications, require complex service-oriented infrastructures; these are powerful and extensible environments, but they usually result in difficult to deploy and manage for ESS research teams. Thus, ESS researchers would gain great benefit from an easy way of sharing geo-information using the international interoperability standards. The variety and complexity of geo-information sharing services poses several architectural issues; in fact these services encompass sensor planning and observation, coverages and features publication and retrieving, models and simulations running, data citation and annotation. Consequently, the adoption of a specific architectural style must be carefully evaluated against these specific requirements. In this work we analyse the existing geospatial services from an architectural perspective and investigate their possible RESTful implementation. Particular attention is paid to the OGC Web Coverage Service (WCS). Possible benefits and drawbacks, along with open issues and possible solutions are discussed. Our investigation suggests that REST may fit well to the typical ESS research usage cases. However, the architectural choice (e.g. Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) vs REST) will depend on a case-by-case analysis. Other important factors must be considered, such as the application context: a valuable example in point are the e-Business and e-Government application scenarios which require message based solutions – like those implemented by SOAP. In any case, there is a clear need for harmonization and reconciliation of these two approaches.

Transport infrastructure surveillance and monitoring by electromagnetic sensing: the ISTIMES project

The ISTIMES project, funded by the European Commission in the frame of a joint Call “ICT and Security” of the Seventh Framework Programme, is presented and preliminary research results are discussed. The main objective of the ISTIMES project is to design, assess and promote an Information and Communication Technologies (ICT)-based system, exploiting distributed and local sensors, for non-destructive electromagnetic monitoring of critical transport infrastructures. The integration of electromagnetic technologies with new ICT information and telecommunications systems enables remotely controlled monitoring and surveillance and real time data imaging of the critical transport infrastructures. The project exploits different non-invasive imaging technologies based on electromagnetic sensing (optic fiber sensors, Synthetic Aperture Radar satellite platform based, hyperspectral spectroscopy, Infrared thermography, Ground Penetrating Radar-, low-frequency geophysical techniques, Ground based systems for displacement monitoring). In this paper, we show the preliminary results arising from the GPR and infrared thermographic measurements carried out on the Musmeci bridge in Potenza, located in a highly seismic area of the Apennine chain (Southern Italy) and representing one of the test beds of the project.

WPS mediation: An approach to process geospatial data on different computing backends

The OGC Web Processing Service (WPS) specification allows generating information by processing distributed geospatial data made available through Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDIs). However, current SDIs have limited analytical capacities and various problems emerge when trying to use them in data and computing-intensive domains such as environmental sciences. These problems are usually not or only partially solvable using single computing resources. Therefore, the Geographic Information (GI) community is trying to benefit from the superior storage and computing capabilities offered by distributed computing (e.g., Grids, Clouds) related methods and technologies. Currently, there is no commonly agreed approach to grid-enable WPS. No implementation allows one to seamlessly execute a geoprocessing calculation following user requirements on different computing backends, ranging from a stand-alone GIS server up to computer clusters and large Grid infrastructures. Considering this issue, this paper presents a proof of concept by mediating different geospatial and Grid software packages, and by proposing an extension of WPS specification through two optional parameters. The applicability of this approach will be demonstrated using a Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) mediated WPS process, highlighting benefits, and issues that need to be further investigated to improve performances.

Biodiversity and climate change use scenarios framework for the GEOSS interoperability pilot process

Abstract Climate change threatens to commit 15–37% of species to extinction by 2050. There is a clear need to support policy-makers analyzing and assessing the impact of climate change along with land use changes. This requires a megascience infrastructure that is capable of discovering and integrating enormous volumes of multi-disciplinary data, i.e. data from biodiversity, earth observation, and climatic archives. Metadata and services interoperability is necessary. The Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS) works to realize such an interoperability infrastructure based on systems architecture standardization. In this paper we describe the results of linking the infrastructures of Climate Change research and Biodiversity research together using the approach envisioned by GEOSS. In fact, we present and discuss a service-oriented framework which was applied to implement and demonstrate the Climate Change and Biodiversity use scenario of the GEOSS Interoperability Process Pilot Project (IP3). This interoperability is done for the purpose of enabling scientists to do large-scale ecological analysis. We describe a generic use scenario and related modelling workbench that implement an environment for studying the impacts of climate change on biodiversity. The Service Oriented Architecture framework, which realizes this environment, is described. Its standard-based components and services, according to GEOSS requirements, are discussed. This framework was successfully demonstrated at the GEO IV Ministerial Meeting in Cape Town, South Africa November 2007.

Integrative Research: The EuroGEOSS Experience

The implementation of the INSPIRE Directive in Europe and similar efforts around the globe to develop spatial data infrastructures and global systems of systems have been largely focusing on the adoption of agreed technologies, standards, and specifications to address the interoperability challenge. However, addressing the key scientific challenges of humanity in the 21st century requires a more comprehensive integrative research effort, which in turn may pose more complex requirements on the systems to be integrated, and increase the number of arrangements required to support them. This paper analyses the main challenges related to integrative interoperability, such as mutual understanding of requirements and methods, theoretical underpinning, and tacit knowledge. To illustrate our contribution to the integrative research, the paper proposes the flexible approach to interoperability, based on mediation and brokering, that has been implemented by the EuroGEOSS research project. It also demonstrates that this approach allows scientific and non-scientific stakeholders to overcome the increased complexity of the integration effort mentioned above and charts the trajectory for the evolution of current spatial data infrastructures.

The GEOSS Interoperability Process Pilot Project (IP3)

There is an ever-increasing need to integrate knowledge from the diverse disciplines engaged in studying the constituent parts of the complex Earth system. With the emergence of the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS), which is bringing together thousands of previously isolated Earth observing systems, the necessity of establishing methods that will help in the integration of varied discipline information systems becomes even more urgent. The Group on Earth Observations (GEO) was established to oversee the creation of GEOSS which seeks to advance the convergence of Earth observing systems based on interoperability arrangements agreed to by consensus. We describe the specific approaches that GEO has proposed for achieving interoperability among its component systems and give an overview of the GEOSS Interoperability Process Pilot Project (IP3). The IP3 is helping to develop an advanced information infrastructure that supports the formation and operation of Earth System Science communities based on cross-disciplinary information exchange. This means moving from discipline-specific monolithic data-centric systems toward modular service-oriented information systems. GEOSS seeks to provide scientists, researchers, and decision makers with a persistent set of independent but interoperable information services that can be applied to address many pressing societal issues. The IP3 is furthering this cause by piloting a framework for multidisciplinary knowledge integration.

Unidata’s Common Data Model mapping to the ISO 19123 Data Model

Access to real-time distributed Earth and Space Science (ESS) information is essential for enabling critical Decision Support Systems (DSS). Thus, data model interoperability between the ESS and DSS communities is a decisive achievement for enabling cyber-infrastructure which aims to serve important societal benefit areas. The ESS community is characterized by a certain heterogeneity, as far as data models are concerned. Recent spatial data infrastructures implement international standards for the data model in order to achieve interoperability and extensibility. This paper presents well-accepted ESS data models, introducing a unified data model called the Common Data Model (CDM). CDM mapping into the corresponding elements of the international standard coverage data model of ISO 19123 is presented and discussed at the abstract level. The mapping of CDM scientific data types to the ISO coverage model is a first step toward interoperability of data systems. This mapping will provide the abstract framework that can be used to unify subsequent efforts to define appropriate conventions along with explicit agreed-upon encoding forms for each data type. As a valuable case in point, the content mapping rules for CDM grid data are discussed addressing a significant example.