A Perspective on the Electronic Geophysical Year

1. A Perspective on the Electronic Geophysical Year Raymond J. Walker UCLA Presented at eGY General Meeting Boulder, Colorado March 13, 2007

2. My Going In Position • The goal of eGY is to enable science that would not be possible without eGY. • eGY should serve the science community. • It must move quickly to facilitate research. • The benefits of eGY must outlast eGY.

3. Establishing a Working Worldwide data Environment for the eGY • Use a discipline approach like that being used by the virtual observatories. • Allow the science needs and the scientific community to drive the system. • Don’t try to build a centralized system – the data are distributed and will be. • The key to any data system is the metadata and community wide standards are essential. • Leverage what already exists.

4. International Cooperation is Essential and Possible • The data needed in every discipline are worldwide. • The Planetary Data System (PDS) provides a possible path toward building an international data environment. • The Planetary Data System (PDS) has been serving the NASA planetary science community for almost 20 years. • PDS has united the disciplines of planetary science with common metadata. • Planetary science spans all of the “geosciences”. • PDS is organized by discipline and run by scientists active in research in those disciplines.

5. The Planetary Data System becomes International Planetary Data Alliance (IPDA) • PDS has 7 science discipline nodes. • PDS uses a common technical data dictionary and data model that spans all of the disciplines coupled with local data dictionaries that serve the individual disciplines. • A few years ago the European Space Agency (ESA) started to develop a planetary data system for their missions (PSA). • They decide to adopt the PDS data model as a starting point. • PDS in turn agreed to work with PSA to make sure that the data model served both communities.

6. IPDA • About a year ago other nations (Japan, China, Russia, and India) engaged in planetary science met with PDS and PSA representatives. • They formed the IPDA. • The approach will be the same as the ESA –NASA collaboration- start with the existing data model and work together to make sure it supports the science needs of the community.

7. The State of Heliophysics Data March 2007

8. The State of Heliophysics Data Systems in December, 2007 (I hope) ResidentArchive VxO Individual Researcher VMO

9. The Fundamental Building Block • Resource: An object (document, data, etc.) or service available for use. • Repository: A facility for storing and maintaining digital information in accessible form • Registry: A collection point for metadata about resources. • Access Point: An interface to the registries and resources. The glue that binds: • Data Model: Describes in an abstract way how data is represented. This includes semantics (meaning of terms) and ontology (relationships). • Access Methods: Mechanisms to search for, use and distribute resources. Resource Repository Registry Access point Model and Methods

10. Approach • Community-wide standards are essential. • Data Model • Core Functions • Repository Content (documentation, ancillary data, etc.) • In Heliophysics the SPASE data model and XML representation for metadata will be used. • The SPASE Consortium is international and is open to all. • The SPASE data model exists now. • SPASE is an “interlingua” designed to work with existing data repositories and data models and allow them to exchange data. • We need to use it, break it and improve it.

11. What is required to join the VXO’s and SPASE? • Join the SPASE consortium and help make sure the data dictionary and data model support your science community. • Make data available electronically and use the SPASE metadata either in the repository or as an interlingua. • The VXOs are developing tools to help create the registries, generate the SPASE metadata and populate the registries. They are available to the entire community.