Below are a few excerpts from the current Unidata
Strategic Plan that highlight the importance of the
outreach activities summarized in this status update?
... to build infrastructure that makes it easy to integrate and use data from disparate geoscience disciplines
Data formats like netCDF, together with community-based data standards like the Climate and Forecast metadata convention and the Common Data Model are enhancing the widespread usability and interoperability of scientific datasets.
Advance geoscience data and metadata standards and conventions
... our experience shows us that robust solutions arise from community and collaborative efforts
... close partnerships and collaboration with geoscience data providers, tool developers, and other stakeholders, and the informed guidance of our governing committees
As part of Unidata's first training workshop on software development using Python, experimentation began with the Wakari cloud-hosted development environment. This work has continued since then but at a slower pace due to the departure of software engineer, Marcus Hermida. Since then, the work has been focused on the use of the community supported OWSlib tools for accessing data from OPeNDAP servers via a brokering layer that makes the data available via other standard interfaces, especially Web Map Service (WMS) and Web Coverage Serviced (WCS).
This work will continue as resources allow.
Discussion paper:
Wiki:
Email list sign up page:
The ODIP (Ocean Data Interoperability Platform) was funded by the European Commission and we continue to work with San Diego Supercomputing Center and Woods Hole to get the US part of the project funded by NSF. Unidata's technologies (especially THREDDS and netCDF) are part of the project and we also maintain a liaison role and serve on the steering team.
to
make out community aware of the work an possible
applications. Unidata participated in the initial workshop
and in the special
ODIP session at the IMDIS conference September and the
second ODIP Workshop and steering team meeting at Scripps
Institute for Oceanography in December.
http://www.odip.org/content/news_details.asp?menu=0100000_000001
http://seadatanet.maris2.nl/newsletter.asp#70
There will be and ODIP splinter session at the EGU and the next ODIP workshop and steering team meetings are scheduled for August.
EarthCube Discrete Continuous Building Block Project.
Unidata has an active role in this new EarthCube initiative. From the project description:
Geoscience information is defined on both discrete and continuous spatial domains. Discrete spatial domains include point locations of observations at measurement sites and GIS coverages of point, line and area features used for observation and data interpretation. Continuous spatial domains are used in geophysical fluid sciences such as for the atmosphere, oceans, and land subsurface to describe arrays of measured or modeled variables defined on a mesh of uniformly spaced points. Data defined on either discrete or continuous spatial domains may also vary discretely or continuously in time, ranging from one-time samples, to samples at random points of time, to samples at regularly spaced intervals of time. This proposal builds upon previous work called “Crossing the Digital Divide” focused on integrated discovery of common information themes including precipitation in discrete data from the CUAHSI hydrologic information system and continuous data from the Unidata THREDDS data server. This project will advance that work by investigating in the first year creating new technologies for publishing and discovery of information through the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS) Common Infrastructure, the definition of a Common Information Model for discrete and continuous data, development of shared software tools for using this Common Information Model, and extension of the concepts to similar information in the Polar, Ocean and Solid Earth Sciences.