e GY Virtual Observatory Working Group report

1. eGY Virtual Observatory Working Group report www.egy.org Chair: Peter Fox (HAO/ESSL/NCAR), pfox@ucar.edu Co-chairs: Volodya Papitashvili (Michigan), papita@umich.edu D. Aaron Roberts (NASA/GSFC), aaron.roberts@nasa.gov

2. Role Facilitate, inform, stimulate, encourage, and promote: • Modern data access and services (“e-Science for Geoscience”) • Responsible data stewardship • Cooperation among bodies/initiatives to reduce duplication and proliferation of standards, and share expertise • Establishment of virtual observatories throughout the geosciences • Establishment of criteria to determine optimal and minimum funding for data activities supporting research eGY also serves to provide a link between programs with related data and information requirements - IPY, IHY, Planet Earth, and initiatives such as GEOSS. Promoting the development of Virtual Observatories in the Earth and space sciences is a central objective of eGY.

3. What value can eGY add? Q. There’s nothing original in the principles and objectives behind eGY, and lots of informatics (e-Science) initiatives are already taking place, so why bother with eGY? • eGY is already providing valuable use-cases for virtual observatories to respond to. eGY provides a forum to documenting the state of virtual observatories 5 years after their conception.

4. Encyclopedia - we’ve made it! Virtual observatory is a collection of integrated astronomical data archives and software tools that utilize computer networks to create an environment in which research can be conducted. Several countries have initiated national virtual observatory programs that will combine existing databases from ground-based and orbiting observatories and make them easily accessible to researchers. As a result, data from all the world's major observatories will be available to all users and to the public. This is significant not only because of the immense volume of astronomical data but also because the data on stars and galaxies has been compiled from observations in a variety of wavelengths: optical, radio, infrared, gamma ray, X-ray and more. Each wavelength can provide different information about a celestial event or object, but also requires a special expertise to interpret. In a virtual observatory environment, all of this data is integrated so that it can be synthesized and used in a given study. http://www.encyclopedia.com/html/v1/virtobserv.asp

5. Yet more definitions • AVO: A virtual observatory (VO) is a collection of interoperating data archives and software tools which utilize the internet to form a scientific research environment in which astronomical research programs can be conducted. In much the same way as a real observatory consists of telescopes, each with a collection of unique astronomical instruments, the VO consists of a collection of data centres each with unique collections of astronomical data, software systems and processing capabilities. • From the Grid: virtual observatory - astronomical / solar / solar terrestrial data repositories made accessible through grid and web services. • Workshop: A Virtual Observatory (VO) is a suite of software applications on a set of computers that allows users to uniformly find, access, and use resources (data, software, document, and image products and services using these) from a collection of distributed product repositories and service providers. A VO is a service that unites services and/or multiple repositories. • VxOs - discipline/domain specific VO

6. Virtual Observatories • Conceptual examples: • In-situ: Virtual measurements • Related measurements • Remote sensing: Virtual, integrative measurements • Data integration • Brokers of data, and service providers. • Who holds the metadata? Who imposes the catalog, or vocabulary?

7. VOs and data providers • Not a VO: • When you hand off a user to another site • Only one dataset • When you do not deliver, or do not arrange for delivery of the data • When your curation role is not evident • DP: • Acquire data and produce data products (static or dynamic). • Preserve data in useable forms. • Distribute data, and provide easy machine (API) and Internet browser access. • Support a communication mechanism – should support a standards-based messaging system (e.g., ftp, http, SOAP, XML) • Produce, document, and make easily available metadata for product finding and detailed data granule content description. Ideally, maintain a catalogue of detailed data availability information. • Assure the validity and quality of the data. • Document the validation process. • Provide quality information (flags). • Maintain careful versioning including the processing history of a product. • Maintain an awareness of standards (such as community accepted data models), and adhere to them as needed. • Provide software required to read and interpret the data; ideally the routines used by the PI science team should be available to all.

8. What should a VO do? • Make “standard” scientific research much more efficient. • Even the PI teams should want to use them. • Must improve on existing services (Mission and PI sites, etc.). VOs will not replace these, but will use them in new ways. • Enable new, global problems to be solved. • Rapidly gain integrated views from the solar origin to the terrestrial effects of an event. • Find data related to any particular observation. • (Ultimately) answer “higher-order” queries such as “Show me the data from cases where a large solar coronal mass ejection remote-sensed from space was also observed in situ.”

9. Deliverables - VO WG efforts • Networking, links to experts and peers • Coordination for the I*Y and other programs • A mandate via the eGY Declaration for a Geoscience Information Commons • Codes of best practice • Meetings, workshops, and symposia at conferences • Presentations, articles, brochure, press releases • Website: www.egy.org and eGY News • Education and public outreach program • Capacity building activities in developing countries (not yet implemented)

10. Activities The ICESTAR Data Portal Workshop was held in Toulouse (France) on July 19, 2005, during the IAGA Scientific Assembly. Workshop notes can be found at the following web site: http://www.siena.edu/physics/ICESTAR/portal_workshop/portal_workshop.htm Under the ICESTAR umbrella, Bob Clauer of U. Michigan has taken a lead of organizing a series of "magnetometer network coordination workshops” during the 2006 national and international space physics and aeronomy meetings (ICS8 in Canada; Spring AGU in Baltimore; GEN Meeting in Colorado; COSPAR in Beijing; SCAR in Tasmania) in response to the IPY and eGY call for the free data access and exchange.

11. 33 abstracts (largest ESSI session), 16 oral presentations, over 120 in attendance at talks. Poster session very well attended. Included a wide variety of VO and DDS, education and NVO. Fall AGU session on Virtual Observatories Fall AGU session on Ontologies 20 abstracts, 7 oral presentations, over 60 in attendance at talks. Poster session well attended. eGY participation at IPY DIS meeting Papitashvili and Berkman attended the Cambridge. eGY plans to hold a reciprocal meeting and invite IPY participants. Fox and Parsons to draft joint white papers describing complementary eGY/IPY VO/DIS plans. EGU session on Virtual Observatories 8 oral presentations are planned as an EGU Union session in Vienna, April 2-7. Fox and Bentley are co-convenors. This is the European version of the Fall 05 AGU session. Also presenting VO in the EDU session Spring AGU session Semantic Data Integration 9 abstracts have been submitted to this session which builds on the 2005 Spring and Fall AGU sessions and is aimed at application of VOs and semantic web technologies to advance science data integration. Spring workshop on GeoSpace Ontologies A community initiative to advance the concepts behind semantic technologies and use of ontologies in Earth and Space Sciences. One-day workshop to be held May 26 at JHU/APL. Announcement to be available next week.

12. GeoInformatics, May 10-12, USGS, Reston, VA Spring AGU, May 22-26, Baltimore, MD COSPAR, July, Beijing, China WPGM, July, Beijing, China IAU, August , Prague, Czech Republic CODATA, Oct 23-25, Beijing, China AGU/FM, Dec, San Francisco, CA Please add to this list! We are especially interested in cross-cutting sessions (to be discussed Tuesday) Upcoming VO workshop/ conference presence:

13. VO Monograph • Currently seeking publisher(s) • Eds. Fox, Papitashvili, Roberts • Authors solicited from meeting contributions • Draft Table of Contents: • Definitions, origins, principles • The current state of VOs • Specific instances of VOs • Use-cases highlighting science progress • Technologies • Future directions • When to publish in relation to “eGY”? • A summary of the VxO activities in 2005-2006 • A report of the years within the eGY (2007-2008)

14. VOs and eGY • Branding (i.e. eGY) • Attribution (data providers) • Campaigns - engaging current VOs to support eGY, e.g. special catalog categories • Should there be an eGY-VO? • Chance to integrate data generated as a part of an eGY-motivated effort (e.g. CEDAR) • Interoperability - getting the same ‘data’ from different VOs

15. WG: Education and Public Outreach

16. Interested in Getting Involved? www.egy.orgAsk for an article in the eGY News Submit an abstract/paper for a coming meeting Contact: pfox@ucar.edu

18. Examples of VxOs

24. CEDAR