The VIRTUAL SOLAR-TERRESTRIAL OBSERVATORY - Exploring paradigms for interdisciplinary data-driven science Peter Fox 1 Don Middleton 2, Deborah McGuinness 3, Stan Solomon 1, Jose Garcia 1, Luca Cinquini 2, Patrick West 1, James Benedict 3, Tony Darnell 1 ( 1 HAO/NCAR) ( 2 SCD/NCAR) ( 3 McGuinness Associates) Virtual Observatory Concept Virtual Observatories can provide vast stores of data concerning scientific observations. As these electronic stores become widely used, there is potential to improve the efficiency, interoperability, collaborative potential, and impact of a wide range of scientific research. In order to realize this potential, technical challenges need to be addressed concerning (at least) representations and interoperability of data, access, and usability. In the Virtual Solar Terrestrial Observatory (VSTO) project, we aim to provide an electronic repository of observational, data, theoretical models, and analysis and interpretation results in the solar terrestrial physics domain. We are also designing and implementing tools and infrastructure for accessing and using the data. Our main contributions include the repository, infrastructure, and tools for the particular solar terrestrial physics as well as the design and infrastructure that may be broadened to cover more diverse science areas and communities of use. In this presentation, we describe the goals, design, initial prototype, and technical infrastructure. We present what we have learned about the processes involved is developing VSTO and the required semantics, how they affect the framework architecture, choice of technologies and service interfaces. We also present what role virtual observatories, like VSTO, may play in supporting large international IGY+50 like-programs, such as eGY. VSTO is an NSF-funded joint effort between the High Altitude Observatory and the Scientific Computing Division at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and McGuinness Associates Consulting. ASSOCIATIONS: Earth System Grid, Community Data Portal, CEDAR, NSF/NMI SPONSORS: National Science Foundation/CISE/Shared Cyberinfrastructure Initiative FURTHER READING: and watch for Ontology Development Develop Use-Cases: 1 - CEDAR, 2 - ACOS, 3- CEDAR, 4- CISM User requirements: talk to the users, often, involve them in specify the details of the use-case Interface specification: user interface, data query, selection, retrieval, plotting determined in conjunction with the ontology (classes) development Architecture design: derived from use-case workflow, interfaces, user requirements Tools and technology: Protégé, SWOOP, Jena, Eclipse, OWL-DL, Spring, Pellet Implement rapid prototype using: Java, SQL, OPeNDAP, ION Script/IDL User feedback: solicit and merge back into use-case, user requirements and design for next iteration GLOSSARY: SWEET - Semantic Web for Earth and Environmental Terminology, sweet.jpl.nasa.gov SPDML - Space Physics Data Markup Language, sd- CEDAR - Coupled Energetics and Dynamics of Atmospheric Regions, cedarweb.hao.ucar.edu CISM - Center for Integrated Space-Weather Modeling, ACOS - Advanced Coronal Observing System, mlso.hao.ucar.edu Ontology - A branch of study concerned with the nature and relations of being, or things which exist. A specification of a conceptualization Solar-Terrestrial System IN PROGRESS: Second version of use-cases 1 and 2, initial user feedback, design evaluation and re-design. Use-case 3 - introduces the measurement of similar quantities using a different instrument and operating mode as well as the need for spatial and temporal reasoning in determining how the ‘data’ will plot ‘itself’ Adding properties to existing ontology, e.g. of parameters, instruments, … leads to additional reasoning and inference Addition of CEDAR datasets to prototype for Use-case 1 instrument types and foruUse-case 3 CISM CEDAR SWEET VSTO +SPDMLACOS Design Methodology Use-Case 1 prototype Use-Case 2 prototype interface Significant results First use-case is from upper atmospheric physics, second use-case is from solar atmospheric physics. The entire class and property structure for observatory, instrument, data service, etc, developed for the first use-case carried over immediately to the second, with a few minor additions (I.e. no conflicts). Straightforward integration with existing catalogs (SQL), data retrieval (OPeNDAP) and plotting (ION/IDL, images), very rapid prototyping. We use a declarative specification of the data available from the domain knowledge. The specification is queryable and much more flexible than the hard coded, static interface of the past. The implementation replicates current CEDARWEB and MLSO functionality with a much more flexible and reusable infrastructure. As a result, the next step will be to enhance the current implementation to expose more of the functionality to the user in a context dependent and user-dependent manner thus allowing the user to have more control and flexibility over his/her tools. Inference on plot types using ontology, give strong motivation for adding properties, more classes, etc. Goals Goal - find the right balance of data/model holdings, portals and client software that a researchers can use without effort or interference as if all the materials were available on his/her local computer. VSTO is a distributed, scalable education and research environment for searching, integrating, and analyzing observational, experimental and model databases in the fields of solar, solar-terrestrial and space physics (SSTSP) and utilizes semantic web technologies. Utilizing use-case applications as a foundation to define the ontology helps provide a comprehensive framework to build on. From this starting pont, it is possible to extract the necessary vocabulary with the help of domain experts. From this, we identified classes, properties, individuals with help from knowledge representation experts from which a small ontology is built. Finally, we encoded an ontology in OWL-DL (using Protégé) to create vsto.owl, cedar.owl, MLSO.owl as well as the instances of the ontology that contain the metadata.