(LDS8) Towards an Integrated Data Environment (Final Report)

Conveners:
Michele Weiss (Michele.Weiss@jhuapl.edu), Johns Hopkins University, APL
Stu Nylund (Stu.Nylund@jhuapl.edu), Johns Hopkins University, APL
John Holt (jmh@haystack.mit.edu), MIT, Haystack

2004 Friday 02 July 1015-1215 AM

A workshop on Integrated Data Environments was held on Friday morning. The workshop successfully brought together scientists, data providers, and data center representatives. The workshop provided an opportunity to discuss issues and challenges for future data environments. We shared ideas about future directions, approaches to providing access to data while maintaining an archive, technologies for preserving information content, as well as how one establishes the procedures and practices that ensure that data remains accessible at all points in a project's life.

Twenty five people attended this session, held on the last day of CEDAR. The organizers appreciated the fact that some of the presenters took time out to make contributions to this workshop when they had other presentations in the parallel Storms workshop. This does, in fact, illustrate the fundamental dichotomy of the community: we want to do science but the process takes many forms and requires many contributions.

After a brief introduction, we heard from seven speakers who presented their views and opinions on the needs of the space science communities and included:

• User concerns and requirements
• Prioritization of user needs
• Needs of the community
• Metadata standards
• Integrated Data Environment interoperability

Program

• Larissa Goncharenko - What Do We Expect & Desire from Distributed Data Systems
• Robert Schunk, L. Scherliess, Jan Sojka and D.C. Thompson - Ionospheric Data Assimilation and Forecasting Methods
• Aaron Ridley - Data Sources Which I Use
• Janet Kozyra - CAWSES: Testbed for Integrated Worldwide Data Sets
• William Rideout and John Holt - Data and Metadata Standards: Lessons Learned from the Madrigal/CEDAR Database
• Elsayed Talaat, Dieter Bilitza, Jeng-Hwa Yee, Bob McGuire and Stuart Nylund - Virtual ITM Observatory and the Future ITM Data Environment
• Barbara Emery, Peter Fox, Jose Garcia, Patrick West, Don Middleton and Stan Solomon - Towards a Virtual Solar-Terrestrial Observatory

These talks demonstrated that the problem will require continued communication, effort and funding in order to establish an integrated data environment that allows a user to seamlessly locate, acquire, and incorporate data into their research activities. As an outcome of the high interest level in the workshop, an email forum has been established and future venues will be explored. To participate, contact any of the workshop conveners.