A Framework for Earth Science Search Interface Development

Designing and Implementing S2S

Eric Rozell, Tetherless World Constellation, RPI

Outline

• S2S Overview

• Motivations & Use Cases

• Research & Development Methodology

• Framework Architecture

• Prototype Implementation

• Results & Future Work

S2S Overview

• Supports reuse of user interface components (“widgets”)

• Uniform search interface for semantically-annotated web services

• Applies ontology to describe the application framework

S2S Overview

Motivations

• Incentivize compliance to web service standards

• Assist data management communities in search interface development

• Lay foundations for federated search and data integration

• Enable community development

Use Cases

Use Case Name

Oceanography Dept.

Collaborators Description

Southern Mariana Trough Cruise Preparation

Biology (Larval Ecology)

Stace Beaulieu, Andrew Maffei,Peter Fox

A biologist is preparing an upcoming cruise to study larval ecology at the Southern Mariana Trough. She’s interested in CTD data, ocean currents, biogeographic data, and hydrothermal vent information. Ideally, this data can be discovered from a single online resource.

Deployment Data & Metadata Discovery

Geology & Geophysics

Maurice Tivey,Andrew Maffei

Find deployments (e.g., cruises, dives, lowerings) that visited the Vema Fracture Zone and associated metadata including bathymetry instruments, underway data, and occurrences of dredging.

Visual Ocean Profile Finder

Physical Oceanography

Ruth Curry,Andrew Maffei

Determine ocean profile data availability through a visual (e.g., map) interface, allowing restriction of results based on geographic line or area and measured parameters.

Integrating Metagenomics and Ocean Properties

Chemical Oceanography

Mak Saito,Andrew Maffei

Integrate web resources publishing metagenomic data and chemical ocean properties to facilitate the study biological effects on ocean chemistry.

Research Methodology

Fox et al., 2009

Development Methodology

ExView (Maffei et al., 2007) and 4DGeoBrowser (Lerner and Maffei, 2001)

Framework Ontology

Framework Architecture

Prototype Implementation

Technology:

Data Resources:

Results

• Extensible Framework– Add web service standards– Add search and analysis widgets– Add data services

• Enables community development– Data managers– UI designers

• Uniform search interface– Customizable, reusable

Future Work

• Implement additional web service standards – e.g., SAWSDL, SPARQL services, OGC standards

• S2S as a discovery interface

• S2S as a federated search environment

• S2S evaluations (usability, extensibility)– VSTO Evaluation Metrics (McGuinness et al., 2007)

References

• P. Fox, D. McGuinness, L. Cinquini, P. West, J. Garcia, J. Benedict, and D. Middleton, “Ontology-supported scientific data frameworks: The virtual solar-terrestrial observatory experience,” Computers and Geosciences, vol. 35, no. 4, pp. 724 – 738, 2009.

• A. Maffei, S. Lerner, J. Lynch, A. Newhall, K. Fall, C. Sellers, Glenn, "ExView: A Real-time Collaboration Environment for Multi-ship Experiments," OCEANS 2007 - Europe, pp.1-6, 18-21 June 2007. doi: 10.1109/OCEANSE.2007.4302345

• S. Lerner, A. Maffei, “4DGeoBrowser: A Web-Based Data Browser and Server for Accessing and Analyzing Multi-Disciplinary Data”, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Technical Report, WHOI-2001-13, October 2001.

• McGuinness, D., Fox, P., Cinquini, L., West, P., Garcia, J., Benedict, J.L., Middleton, D.: The virtual solar-terrestrial observatory: A deployed semantic web application case study for scientific research. In: Proceedings of the Nineteenth Conference on In- novative Applications of Artificial Intelligence (IAAI 2007), Vancouver, BC, Canada (2007)

Research Area

• SemWeb Tech. in Web Application Framework design– Distributed Software Frameworks– Cyberinfrastructure– GeoData2011, USGS cyberinfrastructure callout

Research Area

• Data Discovery, Use & Integration– S2S currently works as data inventory search– Data discovery involves more sophisticated

techniques • Use Case: thermocline in Southern Mariana Trough• Semantic Search• ESIP Discovery Cluster

– Widgets for integration & analysis