GEOSS Interoperability for Weather, Ocean and Water A proposal (currently in negotiations phase) to EC-FP7 Mirko Albani, ESA GEO Architecture & Data Committee meeting Campos do Jordão, Brazil, 28 Feb – 3 Mar Work programme topics addressed: ENV Inter-operable integration of shared Earth Observations in the Global Context Type of funding scheme: Collaborative Project (Large-scale integrating project) Requested funding: Up to 7 MEur Partners: ESA, EC-JRC, CNR, Terradue, ECMWF, BfG, IOC-UNESCO, Bonn University, 52° North, KISTERS, metoffice, Meteo-France, KIT, INPE, Tokyo University

Partners European Space Agency (ESA) – Responsible for the selected GEO portal, – Lead on the development of new components and services for data access – Integrate the emerging science requirements – Prepare for the operational deployment of new GCI capabilities; European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC) – Technical coordinator of the INSPIRE infrastructure, – Co-chair of the GEOSS Architecture and Data Committee, and User Interface Committee, and member of the GEOSS Data Sharing Taskforce, – Lead on the research for the implementation of the data sharing principles, – Coordinate with GEOSS Committees and community of users options for the further evolution of the GEOSS architecture Terradue (T2) – co-lead in GEOWOW Architecture and GCI-evolution – Lead developer of GENESI-DR architecture – Active member of OGC (CSW, Context and WPS Working Groups) Italian National Research Council (CNR) – co-chair of the GEOSS Science & Technology Committee – Lead the research on multi-disciplinary interoperability;

Partners European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts – Together with the UK Met Office and Météo-France – Lead the further development and integration of the Thorpex Interactive Grand Global Ensemble (TIGGE) global weather forecasts data products into the GCI; UNESCO Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission – Lead with its partners the further development and integration of the Global Ocean Observing System (GOOS) into the GCI; University of Bonn – In collaboration with the Bundesanstalt für Gewässerkunde - Global Runoff Data Centre and other partners, – Lead in the development of interoperable hydrological data specifications and applications, and their integration into the GCI.

Partners Brazilian National Institute for Space Research (INPE) – Co-chair of its Architecture and Data Committee, – Support the development of GEOSS as research into next- generation geographical information systems that can make use of distributed data bases. University of Tokyo – Support with data integration and information fusion sciences – Applying research achievements to selected Societal Benefit Areas (including water-, climate-, agriculture and biodiversity).

Scope The overall purpose of GEOWOW is to further enable global access to EO data and resources through the GEOSS Common Infrastructure (GCI) for GEOSS Earth Science users. It will contribute to the development of new tools, processes, procedures and protocols to remove obstacles to the sharing of EO data at global level and address data & product providers identified concerns. Research will include development and testing of adequate mechanisms to encourage reuse and re-dissemination of EO data and products. It will provide a European support to develop the operational capabilities of the GCI by producing applications in three different SBAs (Weather, Water and EcoSystems). Needs from other SBAs might also be considered as appropriate.

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Overview of project structure

SBA-requirements for GCI A pre-requirements analysis carried out already across multiple SBAs [1] indicates that the main requirements for the GCI in respect to its desired functionality can be grouped as follows: – Improved services for discovery and access to data – Processing services – Improved visualisation services – Complex services (e.g. by concatenation and/or workflow services) – Needs to meet the requirements on specific data, derived priority parameters and application identified by the science/application thematic areas communities. [1] (e.g. analysis done by the GEO User Interface Committee - UIC)

Project Objectives related to GEOSS Common infrastructure Collaborate and contribute to the GEOSS Common Infrastructure (GCI) interoperability, standardisation and operability via research, developments and evolution; Experiment, develop and support services for data dissemination, access, use (value adding, processing, …) for selected SBAs, contributing to the development of assessment tools and monitoring methods for sustainable development; Establish, harmonise and promote data sharing and usage procedures consistent with the GEOSS Data Sharing Implementation Guidelines, and contribute to the improvement of the GEOSS Data CORE concept implementation.

Project Objectives related to GEOSS Common infrastructure Propose and validate a distributed architectural model – federating Earth observation and other Earth Science data holdings, – including specific communities’ infrastructures, – European contribution to the evolution of the GEOSS architecture; Develop innovative methods for harmonized access and use of heterogeneous data, services, and models – foster the sharing of knowledge among multiple disciplines, – integrated assessment and understanding necessary to advance global sustainability research;

Research and Development areas In alignment with GEOSS architecture strategy, GEOWOW will focus R&D effort in the following key-areas: SBA multi-disciplinary needs and Communities of Practice (CoP) requirements New mechanisms for data discovery and data access in distributed or federated data repositories New services for on-demand datasets Multi-disciplinary interoperations Semantic Augmented Discovery Cross-SBA applications validation of GEOSS components and Value Added Assessment

Expected Improvements Connecting Resources Improve the mechanisms to augment the metadata content with SBA semantic annotations and retrieve concrete information contained in the available resources. Improve interoperability with wider audience tools (Atom, GeoRSS, Dublin Core, HTML5, OpenSearch, OWS Context). Improve access capabilities to enable wider audiences to use the GEOSS available resources and to enable inter-domain collaboration and multi-disciplinary interoperations.

Define new automatic support systems (e.g. ingestion wizards). Direct online resource linkage and definition of on-demand datasets (virtual series) accessible through web-based geo- processing plug-ins (e.g. WPS). Enable semantic augmented discovery allowing users to search for geo-science data and services based on resource types, topic categories (e.g., agriculture, oceanography), keywords, time and date or geographic location (specified as a place name, or as a place on a map). Expected Improvements New GCI components

Access Control and priority management. Coping with the different access policies and mechanisms. Assure effective ways to address access granularity and control using the single sign-on mechanism. Targeted to support the implementation of the GEOSS Data Sharing Action Plan, and the development of the GEOSS Data CORE concept. Expected Improvements Authentication and Authorization

Milestones GEOWOW is a 3-years project (presumed start in September 2011) It follows a cyclic approach Main milestones include: – GEOWOW-GCI Extensions v1 ready by M12 – End-to-end assessment done for selected SBAs by M17 – GEOWOW-GCI Extensions v2 ready by M30 – End-to-end assessment done for selected SBAs by M36 Requirements AssessmentResearch and Development

Conclusions GEOWOW will address enhancements of the GCI core infrastructure to respond to GEOSS users and SBAs needs. It provides a very good opportunity for research and coordinated evolution of the GCI and can bring a significant step forward towards the GEO 2015 strategic targets. GEOWOW opportunity to be fully exploited in GEO: – Key actors (e.g. core GCI providers) to collaborate with the project.

Back-up Slides

Enhance the accessibility of the TIGGE archive for the wider user community: – The ability to efficiently access long time series of forecast data at user-specified locations; – The provision of data in alternative formats to the WMO GRIB2 standard, including the NetCDF-cf (climate and forecast) format generally used by climate scientists Improve the representation of the uncertainties in the forecast of near-surface weather and to better understand the role of the ocean in determining the predictability of the weather. Proposed improvements Weather SBA

Improve the interoperable exchange of hydrological data on a global scale. Test the GCI architecture against the specific needs of hydrology and according enhancements Ensure for the first time the availability of a common global exchange infrastructure for hydrological data. Develop new datasets (e.g “Global Freshwater Fluxes” to the oceans at selected gauging stations of the Global Terrestrial Network for River Discharge GTN-R) accessible in an interoperable way. Proposed improvements Water SBA

Aggregate ecosystem monitoring and data into the sustained and operational physical oceanographic, climate oriented Global Ocean Observing System. Combine in-situ networks with global remote sensing products such as ocean colour, Integration of the Census of Marine Life from the Ocean Biogeographic Information System (OBIS) to define a set of ocean ecosystem variables and initialize the global sustained observing system required to monitor them Ensure system’s sustainability through reporting to the Convention on Biological Diversity. Proposed improvements Ocean Ecosystems SBA