Real-time storm detection and weather forecast activation through data mining and events processing

Each year across the USA, destructive weather events disrupt transportation and commerce, resulting in both loss of lives and property. Mitigating the impacts of such severe events requires innovative new software tools and cyberinfrastructure through which scientists can monitor data for specific severe weather events such as thunderstorms and launch focused modeling computations for prediction and forecasts of these evolving weather events. Bringing about a paradigm shift in meteorology research and education through advances in cyberinfrastructure is one of the key research objectives of the Linked Environments for Atmospheric Discovery (LEAD) project, a large-scale, interdisciplinary NSF funded project spanning ten institutions. In this paper we address the challenges of making cyberinfrastructure frameworks responsive to real-time conditions in the physical environment driven by the use cases in mesoscale meteorology. The contribution of the research is two-fold: on the cyberinfrastructure side, we propose a model for bridging between the physical environment and e-Science¹ workflow systems, specifically through events processing systems, and provide a proof of concept implementation of that model in the context of the LEAD cyberinfrastructure. On the algorithmic side, we propose efficient stream mining algorithms that can be carried out on a continuous basis in real time over large volumes of observational data. ¹ e-Science is used to describe computationally intensive science that is typically carried out in highly distributed network     

CI-Miner: semantically enhancing scientific processes

The realization of an international cyberinfrastructure of shared resources to overcome time and space limitations is challenging scientists to rethink how to document their processes. Many known scientific process requirements that would normally be considered impossible to implement a few years ago are close to becoming a reality for scientists, such as large scale integration and data reuse, data sharing across distinct scientific domains, comprehensive support for explaining process results, and full search capability for scientific products across domains. This article introduces the CI-Miner approach that can be used to aggregate knowledge about scientific processes and their products through the use of semantic annotations. The article shows how this aggregated knowledge is used to benefit scientists during the development of their research activities. The discussion is grounded on lessons learned through the use of CI-Miner to semantically annotate scientific processes in the areas of geo-sciences, environmental sciences and solar physics: A use case in the field of geo-science illustrates the CI-Miner approach in action.     

中国陆地生态系统碳收支集成研究的e-Science系统构建

全球/区域生态系统碳循环研究具有多台站联网观测、多源异构数据、多模型综合分析、跨领域科学家协同工作等特点。以中国陆地生态系统通量观测研究网络(ChinaFLUX)为基础平台,论述建立碳循环科研信息化环境(e-Carbon Science)的迫切性,系统阐述e-Carbon Science的目标、组成、关键技术及研究进展,构建了由"四环境(碳循环数据集成与服务环境、模型模拟环境、可视化分析环境、科研协同工作环境)、三系统(站点、区域、全国尺度陆地生态系统碳收支评估应用系统)"组成的ChinaFLUX e-Carbon Science,形成ChinaFLUX通量数据采集—传输—存储—管理—处理—可视化—共享服务的一体化系统,实现不同尺度的碳收支快速评估与模拟,支撑并促进我国陆地生态系统碳循环研究和生态信息学发展,对我国野外台站网络信息化起到引领和示范作用。     

Talkoot: software tool to create collaboratories for earth science

“Open science,” where researchers share and publish every element of their research process in addition to the final results, can foster novel ways of collaboration among researchers and has the potential to spontaneously create new virtual research collaborations. Based on scientific interest, these new virtual research collaborations can cut across traditional boundaries such as institutions and organizations. Advances in technology allow for software tools that can be used by different research groups and institutions to build and support virtual collaborations and infuse open science. This paper describes Talkoot, a software toolkit designed and developed by the authors to provide Earth Science researchers a ready-to-use knowledge management environment and an online platform for collaboration. Talkoot allows Earth Science researchers a means to systematically gather, tag and share their data, analysis workflows and research notes. These Talkoot features are designed to foster rapid knowledge sharing within a virtual community. Talkoot can be utilized by small to medium sized groups and research centers, as well as large enterprises such a national laboratories and federal agencies.     

A scalable cyberinfrastructure solution to support big data management and multivariate visualization of time-series sensor observation data

This paper reports our research in developing a cyberinfrastructure platform to support multivariate visualization of data collected from distributed sensor network. Three new techniques were introduced in this platform: (1) a hybrid data caching strategy that takes advantages of a scalable and distributed time series database, OpenTSDB, to realize efficient data retrieval; (2) a hyper-dimensional data cube is established to map and translate multivariate and heterogeneous sensor data into a common data structure to support location-aware visual analysis; and (3) a data-driven visualization module is implemented to support interactive and dynamic visualization on a simulated virtual globe. A series of experiments were conducted to demonstrate the good runtime performance of the proposed system. We expect this work to make a major contribution to both the visualization building block development in cyberinfrastructure research and the advancement of visual presentation and analysis of sensor data in domain sciences.     

DigitalOcean: building a platform for scientific collaboration and social and media sharing on the Drupal content management system

The DigitalOcean (DO) Project is designed to bring essential Web 2.0 capabilities to an open-source software platform built for scientific collaboration and publishing. The DO platform is being built using the Drupal content management system (CMS). The following are some of the core features of the proposed platform: social networking, media/data sharing/publishing, and collaboration spaces for scientific virtual organizations (VO); active support for VO governance and reputation systems for members and objects; Creative Commons licensing, support for preprint archives and micro-articles, and; professional user-profiles that can be saved as well formatted biosketches. The DO platform serves as a collaboration environment for active research teams, a personal repository for individual researchers, an aggregation/filter for science information, and a scientific publishing tool. This article will outline the history and goals of the DO Project, the core technology concerns and solutions, and the opportunities that this new platform will bring to scientists across the planet.     

TESSIN VISLab—laboratory for scientific visualization

Scientific visualization is an integral part of the modeling workflow, enabling researchers to understand complex or large data sets and simulation results. A high-resolution stereoscopic virtual reality (VR) environment further enhances the possibilities of visualization. Such an environment also allows collaboration in work groups including people of different backgrounds and to present results of research projects to stakeholders or the public. The requirements for the computing equipment driving the VR environment demand specialized software applications which can be run in a parallel fashion on a set of interconnected machines. Another challenge is to devise a useful data workflow from source data sets onto the display system. Therefore, we develop software applications like the OpenGeoSys Data Explorer, custom data conversion tools for established visualization packages such as ParaView and Visualization Toolkit as well as presentation and interaction techniques for 3D applications like Unity. We demonstrate our workflow by presenting visualization results for case studies from a broad range of applications. An outlook on how visualization techniques can be deeply integrated into the simulation process is given and future technical improvements such as a simplified hardware setup are outlined.     

全球变化对农业的影响及适应对策

政府间气候变化专门委员会是为气候变化框架公约提供科学和技术评价的机构，下设负责气候和温室气体、影响和对策、社会和经济问题三个工作组。它的第一次评价报告完成于１９９０年，修订于１９９２年。为了于１９９５年９月完成它的第二次评价报告，ＩＰＣ组织了世界各国２００多名各领域的科学家（１３名来自中国）分５０多个章节撰写，于１９９５年３月完成了ＩＰＣＣ第二次评价报告的第三稿。本文浓缩介绍了ＩＰＣＣ第二工作组Ｄ     

A brave new (virtual) world: distributed searches, relevance scoring and facets

Our ability to deal with complex systems has improved through information system research which includes improved modeling (both data and system), the use of semantics and advances in distributed computing. The past decade has seen an explosion in the amount and variety of geosciences data and the emergence of true open data repositories through which scientists can freely access this data. Those data are found in thousands of repositories located around the world. Virtual observatories have been created to address the challenge of helping scientists search those repositories to find and access the required data. This challenge is been addressed by using technologies such as the Internet (with ample connectivity and bandwidth), the Web, cheap computing power, cheap storage and standards for critical components. Many scientific disciplines are developing virtual observatories. Yet some of the most compelling science questions cross multiple domains. While semantics can provide cross domain reasoning, often the first step in answering a question is determining what resources are available which may be relevant to a topic. The topic can be expressed as simple phrases or word sequences. Using a common relevance scoring method at all locations can enable a federated search across loosely coupled providers. The results of which can be organized into facets to aid the user in selecting the most promising resources with which to pursue the scientific investigation. We describe an approach to developing and deploying relevance scoring methods and faceted results in this brave new (virtual) world. We have found that a scoring method which considers both the presence of terms and the proximity of these terms relative to the order of the terms in the query improves the assessment of relevance. We call this Term Presence-Proximity (TPP) scoring and describe a method for calculating a normalized score. TPP scoring compares favorably with other scoring approaches.     

Interactive visual analytics of hydrodynamic flux for the coastal zone

Researchers wish to study the potential impact of sea level rise from climate change, and visual analytic tools can allow scientists to visually examine and explore different possible scenarios from simulation runs. In particular, hydrodynamic flux is calculated to understand the net movement of water; but typically this calculation is tedious and is not easily achieved with traditional visualization and analytic tools. We present a visual analytic method that incorporates a transect profiler and flux calculator. The analytic software is incorporated into our visual analytics tool Vinca, and generates multiple transects, which can be visualized and analysed in several alternative visualizations; users can choose specific transects to compare against real-world data; users can explore how flux changes within a domain. In addition, we report how ocean scientists have used our tool to display multiple-view views of their data and analyse hydrodynamic flux for the coastal zone.     

Conceptualizations of local knowledge in collaborative environmental governance

A major challenge to integrating local knowledge into collaborative environmental governance processes stems from the underlying differences between positivist science and local knowledge; these differences often result in strong differences of opinion regarding which forms of knowledge are valid in environmental decision-making. Previous research on these issues has mainly focused on the attitudes of scientists towards local knowledge. Studies of the views of local and non-scientific actors regarding their own knowledge are much less common. Through a qualitative case study of water allocation planning in South Australia, we analyzed participants’ conceptualizations of local knowledge and the role of local knowledge in collaborative governance. We found that participants defined local knowledge broadly across a number of dimensions and that many acknowledged variability in the nature and quality of different types of local knowledge. While most recognized the value of local knowledge in supporting technical investigations and developing policies, very few participants identified a role for local knowledge in the early stages of the collaborative process (i.e., in framing problems or establishing research protocols). Previous research has highlighted “epistemological anxiety” among scientists and resource managers toward local knowledge as a significant barrier to its effective use in environmental decision-making. This study suggests that state and local actors, and scientists and non-scientists, share similar reservations about local knowledge and highlights the need for researchers and practitioners to take into account the attitudes of all types of participants when considering how to overcome the epistemological challenges related to integrating local knowledge into collaborative management.     

Stakeholder Perceptions of Coastal Habitat Ecosystem Services

The goal of the current study was to document local stakeholder perceptions of ecosystem services provided by coastal habitats and to incorporate values of ecosystem services into an ecosystem-based management plan. A second goal was to identify and quantify ecosystem service supply at the local level, which is a knowledge gap identified by the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. Ecosystem services were quantified as stakeholder perceptions of values. To identify local stakeholder perceptions of coastal habitat ecosystem services, a workshop was conducted at which stakeholders were asked to complete surveys. Data from the surveys were used to create a spatial representation of the number of ecosystem services provided by habitats in the form of a heat map. Results of the study were incorporated into an ecosystem-based management plan to enable stakeholders and managers to make better-informed decisions regarding priority areas for conservation, preservation, and restoration. The methods used in this study can be expanded to develop future ecosystem-based management plans.     

Learning from environmental justice in Viet Village Versai in New Orleans

This paper explores the attempt to plan and to implement pollution remediation projects in Viet Village Versai, New Orleans. The process was marred by gaps in collaboration behaviours between the stakeholders, which ultimately impeded the progress of the remediation projects and as a result, failed to transform the Viet Village Versai into a sustainable community. In drawing the link between the behavioural gaps and implementation failures, I bring attention to the crucial role that collaboration plays in helping to build sustainable communities.     

GIS-based multicriteria analysis: an approach to select priority areas for preservation in the Ahaggar National Park,Algeria

This paper presents a geographic information system (GIS)-based multicriteria decision-making approach for biodiversity preservation of the Ahaggar National Park in Algeria. This tool named spatial decision-making aid (SDMA) enables decision makers to evaluate the relative priorities of conserving the biodiversity in protected areas basing on a set of preferences, criteria and indicators of the area. In this study, we have developed conceptual and methodological solutions to integrate outranking methods (such as elimination and choice to translate reality TRI, preference ranking organizational methods and analytical hierarchy process) of multicriteria analysis in the GIS software to enhance its potential as tools of spatial decision support in land management problems. We integrated the results and other data relevant studied area in a GIS as a starting point for our SDMA prototype for resources management. Through the application, we have designed functionalities that allow producing maps of areas which needed urgent preservation. These methods are more appropriate to decision-making problems and their integration into GIS software (ArcView GIS 3.2 software from Environmental Systems Research Institute) that constitutes a powerful tool of spatial decision-making aid.     

ICL Latin-American Network: on the road to landslide reduction capacity building

There is a clear need for integrated research on landslide disaster risk. Landslide disasters have major impacts in developing countries due to the increasing social vulnerability of both rural and urban communities. In recent decades, landslide disasters in Latin America triggered by both precipitation and earthquakes have also increased considerably. Thus, scientific contributions based on integrated risk research are quite urgent for improving the knowledge base for reducing the vulnerability of exposed communities to landslides. Thus, there is a parallel necessity to promote capacity building for young scientists in Latin America by considering the shift of disaster paradigm to recognize the “unnaturalness” of disasters. Under such a framework, there are particular goals to be pursued including: (1) Development of landslide regional networks with a commitment for understanding risk as a socially constructed process; (2) Engagement of young scientists in integrated landslide risk research; (3) Inducing a scientific multi- and transdisciplinary approach for integrated landslide risk research; (4) Development and implementation of capacity building; (5) Contributing to the dissemination and application of common methodologies on landslide disasters investigations; and (6) Strengthening collaboration on integrated landslide disaster risk research in Latin America. In this paper, we present one of the main activities of the ICL Latin-American network in terms of capacity building carried out in 2013; to that end, the first international workshop on forensic investigations of disasters associated with landslides was held in the University of Sciences and Arts of Chiapas in the city of Tuxtla Gutierrez, Chiapas, Mexico, from June 26th to July 4th, 2013.     

Getting across information communities

Amazon’s deforestation affects citizens from varying information communities. Experts like scientists or journalists acquire relevant data on-site and publish valuable information on the Web. But different and sometimes conflicting views on reality impede sharing of information across communities, relevant content remains far too often undiscovered. We introduce rule-based semantic annotations as solution to facilitate the discovery and evaluation of geographical information. With the distinction between shared domain and local information source ontologies, the proposed architecture of a semantically supported SDI for the Amazon also takes the plethora of GI formats into account. Creating semantic annotations is challenging, a recommender system for semantic annotations enables even the non-IT experts to participate. The benefits of the proposed techniques are further illustrated by a scenario which spans across information communities of economics, ecology, and ethnology.     

Theory and Practice in Mathematical Geology—Introduction and Discussion

Mathematical geology has developed into a very diverse system of mathematical models, algorithms and corresponding software. Experience shows that this diversification of approaches and methods was and is accompanied by an increasing gap between the availability of powerful tools and the continuation of many traditional working methods in the geosciences. Besides continuing to develop models, one of the basic functions of mathematical geology should be to introduce all new tools into practice and to aid non-specialized geoscientists to use them successfully and without bias. Some ways to do so will be briefly discussed here. Instructive and intelligible contributions towards attaining this goal were presented at the last (32nd) International Geological Congress held in Florence, Italy, in 2004. The intention of this present compilation is to suggest relevant discussions and conclusions. Mathematical geology should not be the domain of a few experts. It should be made accessible to all geologists and scientists in related fields.     

数据中心集成开发技术: 新一代GIS架构技术与开发模式

解决分布式异构多源空间数据共享、不同厂家的功能共享和合作开发是当前GIS开发和应用领域的难题.提出了数据中心集成开发模型框架, 并基于该框架提出了新一代GIS架构技术和开发模式, 介绍了数据中心的核心技术——数据仓库技术、功能仓库技术、搭建与配置技术等, 同时给出了国土数据中心的应用实例, 为基于数据中心大型信息化系统解决方案的实现提供了一种新的模型.