Reusable software services for science data systems
A common science data processing software framework yields the benefits of reuse while remaining adaptable to address requirements that are unique to the mission.
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A common science data processing software framework yields the benefits of reuse while remaining adaptable to address requirements that are unique to the mission.
Geologic carbon storage projects are maturing worldwide and the footprint of deployment in the offshore is expanding. At present, there are ten projects in operation or that have been completed, more than 50 in construction and development, and dozens of characterization studies completed or underway. Offshore geologic carbon storage offers potential benefits over onshore geologic carbon storage. These offshore projects are generally remote in location, distant from population centers, and avoid complicated pore space rights while having abundant prospective storage potential. Some offshore fields targeted for carbon storage have comparatively fewer prior borehole penetrations except for areas that have been explored for petroleum production, minimizing potential issues such as pressure interference and infrastructure impacts. Yet offshore geologic carbon storage projects face distinctive technical and economic challenges, such as seafloor geohazards (e.g., seabed instability), expensive maritime transport, and meteorological-oceanographic conditions that can damage infrastructure and impact operations. Analytical capabilities and improved computational speeds have advanced engineering, earth and energy sciences in the wake of the arrival of modern data science over the last decade. These advancements have created an opportunity for integrated, multi-systems modeling approaches utilizing artificial intelligence and machine learning that are no longer limited by computational issues. Analytical tools developed alongside this advancement in data science can be leveraged to calibrate the potential advantages and challenges of carbon storage operations in the offshore. New methods and approaches that incorporate data science to analyze multiple aspects of engineered and natural systems can provide insights that complement the characterization and onsite engineering that traditional commercial and operational software addresses. These new methods and approaches can potentially improve the outcome of energy operations and carbon storage. Providing multi-system, science-driven data analytics enhances the knowledge base that offshore developers, operators, and regulatory bodies may draw from to improve offshore site selection and operational efficiency. Here, we provide a brief synopsis of geologic carbon storage efforts to date, an overview of the engineered and natural systems involved in offshore geologic carbon storage, and a review of publicly available, open-source, offshore and/or carbon storage related data- and science-driven tools developed by 2010 or later that are suitable for screening and assessing regions for offshore geologic carbon storage.
At Goddard, engineers and scientists with a range of experience in science data systems are needed to employ new technologies and develop advances in capabilities for supporting new Earth and Space science research. Engineers with extensive experience in science data, software engineering and computer-information architectures are needed to lead and perform these activities. The increasing types and complexity of instrument data and emerging computer technologies coupled with the current shortage of computer engineers with backgrounds in science has led the need to develop a career path for science data systems engineers and architects.The current career path, in which undergraduate students studying various disciplines such as Computer Engineering or Physical Scientist, generally begins with serving on a development team in any of the disciplines where they can work in depth on existing Goddard data systems or serve with a specific NASA science team. There they begin to understand the data, infuse technologies, and begin to know the architectures of science data systems. From here the typical career involves peermentoring, on-the-job training or graduate level studies in analytics, computational science and applied science and mathematics. At the most senior level, engineers become subject matter experts and system architect experts, leading discipline-specific data centers and large software development projects. They are recognized as a subject matter expert in a science domain, they have project management expertise, lead standards efforts and lead international projects. A long career development remains necessary not only because of the breadth of knowledge required across physical sciences and engineering disciplines, but also because of the diversity of instrument data being developed today both by NASA and international partner agencies and because multidiscipline science and practitioner communities expect to have access to all types of observational data.This paper describes an approach to defining career-path guidance for college-bound high school and undergraduate engineering students, junior and senior engineers from various disciplines.
The FAIR Principles—Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable—offer a widely accepted framework for improving the sharing and reuse of digital scientific data by both human and machine users. Following these principles is critical for effective scientific data stewardship, broader scientific collaboration, and compliance with federal and agency data policies. This paper, based on the work of NASA’s Open, Free, and FAIR Working Group (O’FAIR WG) under the Earth Science Data Systems Program, presents an overview of how FAIR is being applied within NASA’s Earth science data landscape. It highlights ongoing progress and challenges, identifies FAIR-enabling resources, and offers recommendations and strategic actions to enhance the FAIRness of NASA-funded open and free Earth science data products. The FAIR-enabling resources identified underscore the vital role of NASA's existing enterprise processes, standards, tools, and infrastructures in supporting FAIR implementation. Our findings show strong performance in making NASA Earth science data more findable and accessible. However, further work is needed—especially in enhancing interoperability, so that different systems and tools can better understand and exchange data. This is especially important for enabling machine-driven discovery and analysis. We emphasize the importance of a balanced strategy that combines a centralized, top-down approach—focused on building enterprise-level capabilities and processes—with a decentralized, bottom-up approach driven by discipline-specific needs and community practices. We advocate for coordinated efforts to enhance (meta)data interoperability to facilitate seamless data and information sharing and exchange of Earth science data both within NASA and across other agencies managing Earth science data.
The FAIR principle (findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable) governs the storage and sharing of NASA space biology and health data[1]. These guiding principles maximize reuse of data and the reproducibility of scientific findings. The NASA Open Science Data Repository (OSDR; an expansion of NASA GeneLab) was built on the FAIR principles and houses over 500 studies and close to 1000 datasets from decades of space life sciences experiments. OSDR embodies the FAIR principles through data governance that includes mediated, embargoed, and fully open access data. The FAIR data governance principles were recently proposed to be expanded to encompass a FAIREST framework for assessing research data repositories (FAIR + Engagement, Social connections, and Trust)[2]. FAIREST emphasizes the importance of data repositories engaging with the scientific community and gaining the trust of researchers regarding data quality. Trust also refers to the TRUST principles developed for assessment of digital repositories: Transparency, Responsibility, User Focus, Sustainability, Technology[3]. We present the “Open Science for Life in Space” Analysis Working Groups (AWGs) as evidence regarding the power of engagement, social connections, and trust which has enhanced OSDR’s capabilities and productivity. AWG members engage in two main activities. One, members provide feedback on OSDR scientific standards for data ingestion, curation, and reuse (study, subject and assay metadata; processing pipelines; dataset formats and uniformed structures for machine-readability). Two, AWG members collaborate to mine-reuse OSDR data to conduct scientific analysis. With nearly 800 active members, the AWGs have resulted in 32 publications re-using OSDR data and contributed many papers in two major special issues in Cell (2020) and Nature (2024). AWGs also serve as networking groups, facilitate social connections between researchers at all levels of experience, and also have a social online ‘Forum’ used to keep members informed on projects and opportunities. This community-centric, productive, and trustworthy data culture has resulted in a broader effect with international space agencies, academics, and the commercial space sector wanting to submit their data to OSDR. Ten studies of Inspiration 4 data were recently publicly released by OSDR, as were some JAXA human data. Coming up soon in OSDR are data submissions from the European Space Agency, Virgin Galactic PIs, and SpaceX Polaris Dawn. A major benefit of OSDR is the array of standardized and uniformly formatted data (which was developed through AWG member consensus), from which visualization tools, analysis tools, and machine learning models can be built or trained. This talk will cover the Multi-Study Visualization Tool, the Environmental Data Application, RadLab, and a UCSF-NSF funded knowledge graph biomedical health discovery tool ‘SPOKE’ currently being integrated with OSDR. OSDR also provides training programs in bioinformatics and machine learning to improve the scientific community’s awareness of data availability and to boost their ability to perform data analysis. The increasing engagement of the scientific community and the public with technologies powered by artificial intelligence (AI) heightens the need for data analysis to be transparent. The AI for Life in Space initiative leverages the data products provided in OSDR to train AI models, with an emphasis on explainable and trustworthy AI, which would not be possible without FAIR data and metadata. Overall, here we will demonstrate the importance for NASA life sciences data repositories to adhere to the FAIREST framework, by providing examples and success stories from different aspects of OSDR.
The increase in the number and volume, and sources, of globally available Earth science data measurements and datasets have afforded Earth scientists and applications researchers unprecedented opportunities to study our Earth in ever more sophisticated ways. In fact, the NASA Earth Observing System Data Information System (EOSDIS) archives have doubled from 2007 to 2014, to 9.1 PB (Ramapriyan, 2009; and https:earthdata.nasa.govaboutsystem-- performance). In addition, other US agency, international programs, field experiments, ground stations, and citizen scientists provide a plethora of additional sources for studying Earth. Co--analyzing huge amounts of heterogeneous data to glean out unobvious information is a daunting task. Earth science data analytics (ESDA) is the process of examining large amounts of data of a variety of types to uncover hidden patterns, unknown correlations and other useful information. It can include Data Preparation, Data Reduction, and Data Analysis. Through work associated with the Earth Science Information Partners (ESIP) Federation, a collection of Earth science data analytics use cases have been collected and analyzed for the purpose of extracting the types of Earth science data analytics employed, and requirements for data analytics tools and techniques yet to be implemented, based on use case needs. ESIP generated use case template, ESDA use cases, use case types, and preliminary use case analysis (this is a work in progress) will be presented.
Earth Science Data and Information Systems Overview at the Open Source Science for the Earth System Observatory Science Data Processing System Workshop.
Recognizing the significance of NASA remote sensing Earth science data in monitoring and better understanding our planet s natural environment, NASA has implemented the Decision Support Through Earth Science Research Results program (NASA ROSES solicitations). a) This successful program has yielded several monitoring, surveillance, and decision support systems through collaborations with benefiting organizations. b) The Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Center (GES DISC) has participated in this program on two projects (one complete, one ongoing), and has had opportune ad hoc collaborations gaining much experience in the formulation, management, development, and implementation of decision support systems utilizing NASA Earth science data. c) In addition, GES DISC s understanding of Earth science missions and resulting data and information, including data structures, data usability and interpretation, data interoperability, and information management systems, enables the GES DISC to identify challenges that come with bringing science data to decision makers. d) The purpose of this presentation is to share GES DISC decision support system project experiences in regards to system sustainability, required data quality (versus timeliness), data provider understanding of how decisions are made, and the data receivers willingness to use new types of information to make decisions, as well as other topics. In addition, defining metrics that really evaluate success will be exemplified.
NASA's Earth Science Data Systems (ESDS) Program has evolved over the last two decades, and currently has several core and community components. Core components provide the basic operational capabilities to process, archive, manage and distribute data from NASA missions. Community components provide a path for peer-reviewed research in Earth Science Informatics to feed into the evolution of the core components. The Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS) is a core component consisting of twelve Distributed Active Archive Centers (DAACs) and eight Science Investigator-led Processing Systems spread across the U.S. The presentation covers how the ESDS Program continues to evolve and benefits from as well as contributes to advances in Earth Science Informatics.
In the early days of spaceflight, space life sciences data were been collected and stored in numerous databases, formats, media-types and geographical locations. While serving the needs of individual research teams, these data were largely unknown/unavailable to the scientific community at large. As a result, the Space Act of 1958 and the Science Data Management Policy mandated that research data collected by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration be made available to the science community at large. The Biomedical Informatics and Health Care Systems Branch of the Space Life Sciences Directorate at JSC and the Data Archive Project at ARC, with funding from the Human Research Program through the Exploration Medical Capability Element, are fulfilling these requirements through the systematic population of the Life Sciences Data Archive. This program constitutes a formal system for the acquisition, archival and distribution of data for Life Sciences-sponsored experiments and investigations. The general goal of the archive is to acquire, preserve, and distribute these data using a variety of media which are accessible and responsive to inquiries from the science communities.
This talk will describe the support and distribution of CO2 data products from OCO-2, AIRS, and ACOS, that are archived and distributed from the Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Center. We will provide a brief summary of the current online archive and distribution metrics for the OCO-2 Level 1 products and plans for the Level 2 products. We will also describe collaborative data sets and services (e.g., matchups with other sensors) and solicit feedback for potential future services.
It is a challenge to access and process fast growing Earth science data from satellites and numerical models, which may be archived in very different data format and structures. NASA data centers, managed by the Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS), have developed a rich and diverse set of data services and tools with features intended to simplify finding, downloading, and working with these data. Although most data services and tools have user guides, many users still experience difficulties with accessing or reading data due to varying levels of familiarity with data services, tools, and/or formats. A type of structured online document, data recipe, were created in beginning 2013 by Goddard Earth Science Data and Information Services Center (GES DISC). A data recipe is the How-To document created by using the fixed template, containing step-by-step instructions with screenshots and examples of accessing and working with real data. The recipes has been found to be very helpful, especially to first-time-users of particular data services, tools, or data products. Online traffic to the data recipe pages is significant to some recipes. In 2014, the NASA Earth Science Data System Working Group (ESDSWG) for data recipes was established, aimed to initiate an EOSDIS-wide campaign for leveraging the distributed knowledge within EOSDIS and its user communities regarding their respective services and tools. The ESDSWG data recipe group started with inventory and analysis of existing EOSDIS-wide online help documents, and provided recommendations and guidelines and for writing and grouping data recipes. This presentation will overview activities of creating How-To documents at GES DISC and ESDSWG. We encourage feedback and contribution from users for improving the data How-To knowledge base.
Constellations have proven to be an effective and efficient way to acquire earth science data. By flying together, sensors on all satellites in a constellation take measurements of the same air, water, or land mass at essentially the same time. The sensors form a single "virtual satellite". The key to making a constellation effective and efficient is keeping the operations as independent as possible in order to minimize the operational burden and costs. The Earth Science Constellation (ESC) has been successful on all counts and continues to welcome new missions to continue its 18+ year record of coincidental earth science observations. The ESC also serves as a model for future constellation designs. This paper describes the ESC and its evolution from its initial launches in 1999 through the present and how new missions might benefit from joining the ESC.
Constellations have proven to be an effective and efficient way to acquire earth science data. By flying together, sensors on all satellites in a constellation take measurements of the same air, water, or land mass at essentially the same time. The sensors form a single "virtual satellite". The key to making a constellation effective and efficient is keeping the operations as independent as possible in order to minimize the operational burden and costs. The Earth Science Constellation (ESC) has been successful on all counts and continues to welcome new missions to continue its 18+ year record of coincidental earth science observations. The ESC also serves as a model for future constellation designs. This paper describes the ESC and its evolution from its initial launches in 1999 through the present and how new missions might benefit from joining the ESC.
NASA committed to support the collection and distribution of Earth science data to study global change in the 1990's. A series of Earth science remote sensing satellites, the Earth Observing System (EOS), was to be the centerpiece. The concept for the science data system, the EOS Data and Information System (EOSDIS), created new challenges in the data processing of multiple satellite instrument observations for climate research and in the distribution of global-coverage remote sensor products to a large and growing science research community. EOSDIS was conceived to facilitate easy access to EOS science data for a wide heterogeneous national and international community of users. EOSDIS was to provide a spectrum of services designed for research scientists working on NASA focus areas but open to the general public and international science community. EOSDIS would give researchers tools and assistance in searching, selecting and acquiring data, allowing them to focus on Earth science climate research rather than complex product generation. Goals were to promote exchange of data and research results and expedite development of new geophysical algorithms. The system architecture had to accommodate a diversity of data types, data acquisition and product generation operations, data access requirements and different centers of science discipline expertise. Steps were taken early to make EOSDIS flexible by distributing responsibility for basic services. Many of the system operations concept decisions made in the 90s continued to this day. Once implemented, concepts such as the EOSDIS data model played a critical role developing effective data services, now a hallmark of EOSDIS. In other cases, EOSDIS architecture has evolved to enable more efficient operations, taking advantage of new technology and thereby shifting more resources on data services and less on operating and maintaining infrastructure. In looking to the future, EOSDIS may be able to take advantage of commercial compute environments for infrastructure and further enable large scale climate research. In this presentation, we will discuss key EOSDIS operations concepts from the 1990's, how they were implemented and evolved in the architecture, and look at concepts and architectural challenges for EOSDIS operations utilizing commercial cloud services.
NASA Earth science data collected from satellites, model assimilation, airborne missions, and field campaigns, are large, complex and evolving. Such characteristics pose great challenges for end users (e.g., Earth science and applied science users, students, citizen scientists), particularly for those who are unfamiliar with NASA's EOSDIS and thus unable to access and utilize datasets effectively. For example, a novice user may simply ask: what is the total rainfall for a flooding event in my county yesterday? For an experienced user (e.g., algorithm developer), a question can be: how did my rainfall product perform, compared to ground observations, during a flooding event? Nonetheless, with rapid information technology development such as natural language processing, it is possible to develop simplified Web interfaces and back-end processing components to handle such questions and deliver answers in terms of text, data, or graphic results directly to users.In this presentation, we describe the main challenges for end users with different levels of expertise in accessing and utilizing NASA Earth science data. Surveys reveal that most non-professional users normally do not want to download and handle raw data as well as conduct heavy-duty data processing tasks. Often they just want some simple graphics or data for various purposes. To them, simple and intuitive user interfaces are sufficient because complicated ones can be difficult and time-consuming to learn. Professionals also want such interfaces to answer many questions from datasets. One solution is to develop a natural language based search box like Google and the search results can be text, data, graphics and more. Now the challenge is, with natural language processing, can we design a system to process a scientific question typed in by a user? In this presentation, we describe our plan for such a prototype. The workflow is: 1) extract needed information (e.g., variables, spatial and temporal information, processing methods, etc.) from the input, 2) process the data in the backend, and 3) deliver the results (data or graphics) to the user.
The purpose of this poster is to promote a common understanding of the usefulness of, and activities that pertain to, Data Analytics and more broadly, the Data Scientist; Facilitate collaborations to better understand the cross usage of heterogeneous datasets and to provide accommodating data analytics expertise, now and as the needs evolve into the future; Identify gaps that, once filled, will further collaborative activities. Objectives Provide a forum for Academic discussions that provides ESIP members a better understanding of the various aspects of Earth Science Data Analytics Bring in guest speakers to describe external efforts, and further teach us about the broader use of Data Analytics. Perform activities that:- Compile use cases generated from specific community needs to cross analyze heterogeneous data- Compile sources of analytics tools, in particular, to satisfy the needs of the above data users- Examine gaps between needs and sources- Examine gaps between needs and community expertise- Document specific data analytics expertise needed to perform Earth science data analytics Seek graduate data analytics Data Science student internship opportunities.
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