Award Abstract # 1740627
Collaborative Research: EarthCube Integration--Brokered Alignment of Long-Tail Observations (BALTO)

NSF Org: AGS
Division of Atmospheric and Geospace Sciences
Recipient: OPEN SOURCE PROJECT FOR A NETWORK DATA ACCESS PROTOCOL, THE
Initial Amendment Date: September 15, 2017
Latest Amendment Date: September 15, 2017
Award Number: 1740627
Award Instrument: Standard Grant
Program Manager: Subhashree Mishra
sumishra@nsf.gov
 (703)292-2979
AGS
 Division of Atmospheric and Geospace Sciences
GEO
 Directorate for Geosciences
Start Date: September 15, 2017
End Date: August 31, 2021 (Estimated)
Total Intended Award Amount: $326,435.00
Total Awarded Amount to Date: $326,435.00
Funds Obligated to Date: FY 2017 = $326,435.00
History of Investigator:
  • James Gallagher (Principal Investigator)
    j.gallagher@opendap.org
  • David Fulker (Co-Principal Investigator)
Recipient Sponsored Research Office: Open Source Project for Network Data Access Protocols
400 WESTMINSTER ST.
PROVIDENCE
RI  US  02903-3222
(401)284-1304
Sponsor Congressional District: 02
Primary Place of Performance: Open Source Project for Network Data Access Protocols
RI  US  02882-1124
Primary Place of Performance
Congressional District:
02
Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): SNH8NBJV5NQ5
Parent UEI:
NSF Program(s): EarthCube
Primary Program Source: 01001718DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT
Program Reference Code(s): 7433, 9150
Program Element Code(s): 807400
Award Agency Code: 4900
Fund Agency Code: 4900
Assistance Listing Number(s): 47.050

ABSTRACT

This project, Brokered Alignment for Long-Tail Observations (BALTO), is supported under the EarthCube program. The development team seeks to build a tool and infrastructure to allow the community to easily submit long-tail observational data that cannot easily fit into existing data repositories. A data brokering technique will be developed to accomplish the goals of the study. Graduate students, including from underrepresented minority groups, will receive training opportunities via this project.

To facilitate access to long-tail observations this work seeks to develop a core capability for the future EarthCube (EC) architecture in the Architecture and Implementation Plan - Brokered Alignment for Long-Tail Observations (BALTO). BALTO entails an open-source interface to discover, access and transform geoscience data sources through a brokering solution implemented by user-developed accessors. BALTO integrates core attributes of successful prior EC Building Blocks, BCube and ODSIP, to create a next generation EC capability. Leveraging its large installed base and its open-source flexibility, BALTO will extend Hyrax OPeNDAP's data server for ODSIP with capabilities for distributed brokering. Results from this project will demonstrate improved access and its impacts on scientific discovery via three NSF funded interdisciplinary use-cases that span geodesy, seismology, hydrology, oceanography, and geodynamics.

PUBLICATIONS PRODUCED AS A RESULT OF THIS RESEARCH

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Njinju, Emmanuel A. and Stamps, D. Sarah and Neumiller, Kodi and Gallager, James "Lithospheric Control of Melt Generation Beneath the Rungwe Volcanic Province, East Africa: Implications for a Plume Source" Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth , v.126 , 2021 https://doi.org/10.1029/2020JB020728 Citation Details

PROJECT OUTCOMES REPORT

Disclaimer

This Project Outcomes Report for the General Public is displayed verbatim as submitted by the Principal Investigator (PI) for this award. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this Report are those of the PI and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation; NSF has not approved or endorsed its content.

BALTO stands for 'Brokered Access to Long Tail Observations.' Brokered Access means access using some intermediary, such as software that can translate information so that many different people, using different programs, can use that data in their work. This is important because wide-spread use is one way to increase the value of research data. Long Tail Observations means scientific data that are gathered mostly by hand (some automation may be involved), and there is often considerable variation in the way values are represented between datasets. Brokering access to this kind of information is one promising way to make Long Tail Observations more widely used, improving efficiency - the same data can be reused in different research work - and expanding our breadth of knowledge - existing data can be used in new ways.

OPeNDAP's work on BALTO followed two paths. We developed brokering techniques that enabled students to conduct geodynamic modeling research and we made it easier to find data when those data are stored on computers spread across the Internet. Our approach to brokering took two forms. We modified a data modeling program called ASPECT (Advanced Solver for Problems in Earth’s ConvecTion) so that it could read data computers on the network running our brokering software. Our brokering software translates data from various formats into a single 'canonical' representation that ASPECT was modified to understand. Data stored in many different ways was made accessible to ASPECT simply by enabling it to read our broker's way of representing the data. A second form of brokering was implemented by enabling the brokering software itself to read data from other computers on the Internet and then provide a 'brokered view' of those other data. See the associated figures.

In addition to the brokering work, we extended the brokering software so that it supported finding scientific data using Google's Dataset search and NSF's GeoCODES service. This activity was added to the project because data location and data brokering are closely related.

To build systems that support searching for data, two things must be done. The locations of the different datasets must all be stored in a single database. In the work we did for this project on data searching, we relied on external systems (Google and GeoCODES) to harvest information from our brokering software. This is the same technique that the popular Google search tool uses to gather information about web pages and it resulted in searching data being stored in centralized databases for each of the two search systems. Secondly, the data indexed by the search system must be indexed using a uniform representation, and that is exactly what our brokering system provides. By providing the data searching systems with a standard representation for the information describing the datasets using the brokering software, we were able to support data searching tools that work like the general web searching systems.

In the course of this work, presentations were made at scientific meetings describing the work and how other people could get and use the brokering software. We also wrote papers that described the system and its operation. The brokering software is available as open source software from www.opendap.org (contact support@opendap.org if you need help). The brokering software is one part of a data server named Hyrax for which OPeNDAP provides on-going operational support. The data server is used by NASA, NOAA, other government agencies, universities and in other countries. We also developed a series of workshops held in the final year of the project that presented our work. These workshops were recorded and are available on-line at https://sites.google.com/vt.edu/balto/training-materials.

 


Last Modified: 12/28/2021
Modified by: James Gallagher

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