1. Interoperability between Earth observations and Earth science models Session Introduction ESIP 2016 Winter Meeting, January 6-8, 2016
Liping Di
Center for Spatial Information Science and Systems (CSISS)
George Mason University (GMU)
4400 University Drive, MSN 6E1
Fairfax, VA 22030

2. Introduction
Earth science model (ESM) is the major tool to study the Earth system.
Earth observation (EO) through sensors is the most important way to collect Earth science data, which describe the current status of the Earth.
In-situ sensor
Remote sensor
Models typically use the high-level products derived from raw EO data
initializing the models
constraining the model external forcings
calibrating the model parameters
verifying and validating (V&V) model performance
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3. Diversities in EO data and ESMs
EO data are very diverse
collecting sensors
Intended purpose
data formats
projections
access methods
spatial/temporal resolutions and coverage
metadata, quality, documentation, and user support
Numerous ESMs in different Earth science domains
Number of disciplines
Type of models
Parameters needed and parameterization schema
Gridding schema
Data ingest capability

4. Issues related to use EO data in ESMs
difficulty to find and obtain the needed data from geographically distributed data sources,
data not in ready-to-ingest form, e.g., incompatible format, projection, and resolution among data from different sources and between the data from external sources and the in-house analysis system used by scientists,
the unavailability of the needed data products, e.g., further process the low-level data into higher level customized products are often needed before an application can use them
lack of or inadequate computing resources (both software and hardware) to handle the large volume of data.

5. Use Case Scenarios
The needed data product exists at a data source in the form exactly matching the ESM requirement.
find at which data source the data product is located, retrieve the data product, and present the product to the requester.
The needed data product exists at a data source but in a form different from the form needed by the ESM
find where the data is located, retrieve the data product, and apply a set of data preprocessing functions to the data in sequence to make the data in the ESM-needed form.
The needed data product doesn’t exist in any data sources
Determine processing functions and input data needed to generate the requested product, the locations of needed processing functions and the input data, and methods to access the functions and data
apply the functions to data to generate the needed product on the flying

6. Technologies Interoperability standards and specifications
Standard-based data access technologies
Web processing services
Geospatial processing models (GPM), workflow, product virtualization
Workflow engine

7. Today’s talk
OGC activities and standards for model-sensor interoperability and the Model Web (George Percivall)
Needs for Earth observational data from coastal oceanographic modeling perspective (Haosheng Huang)
Realize effortlessly feeding FVCOM and CRM with multisource earth observation data: two applications of CyberConnector (Ziheng Sun)
Geospatial workflows for reusing standard Web services (Eugene Yu)