This EAGER award focuses on exploring the feasibility of the implementation of a new paradigm in the development of an integrative and interoperable data and knowledge management system for the geosciences for a new NSF initiative called EarthCube. Led by a team of experts in geoscience data management, this project focuses on developing a loosely coupled web service approach to allow geoscience data repositories to more effectively make their data holdings discoverable and available to the public. One project goal will be to test the utility of the RESTful (representative state transfer) approach. Its target will be more to link together of disparate geoscience data types from widely distributed data repositories so new types of data-enabled science can be realized. The project engages data management groups from most of the major NSF-funded geoscience data facilities as well as those from a variety of major European geoscience data holdings. This interaction will not only allow broader testing of developed web services, but will also provide a much needed forum to exchange ideas and approaches allowing a better return on investment. One key aspect of this project is the development of URL builders to help users formulate web service requests. Broader impacts of the work include the development of new infrastructure for science and engineering and the likelihood that what results from this project will be applicable to fields outside of the geosciences. An additional broader impact is an international component that engages Italian and other European scientists and data networks as collaborators in the activity.
project was funded as one of the first five concept awards for the EarthCube project. The goal of the SBIP-E effort was to expose a variety of data sets, collected, and managed using NSF funding, through simple web service approaches. In lay terms this means that subsets of data can be discovered, accessed, and utilized by invoking a simple URL with query parameters on the command line. Datasets from eight different partners in earth, atmospheric, and oceanic science domains were made available through these methods. An example web service that allows someone to gain an understanding of the concept would be a method to return locations of earthquakes through a web browser. Entering the following URL into a browser, or invoking it through a variety of other tools such as wget, PERL or CURL will return a list of earthquakes larger than magnitude 6 that occurred during the month of May 2013. http://service.iris.edu/fdsnws/event/1/query?starttime=2013-05-01T00:00:00&endtime=2013-05-31T23:59:00&minmag=7&orderby=time&format=text&nodata=404 Invoking this URL returns a list as follows: #EventID | Time | Latitude | Longitude | Depth/km | Author | Catalog | Contributor | ContributorID | MagType | Magnitude | MagAuthor | EventLocationName 4218658|2013-05-24T05:44:49|54.874|153.281|608.9|NEIC|NEIC PDE|NEIC PDE-Q||MW|8.4|UCMT|SEA OF OKHOTSK 4218647|2013-05-23T17:19:04|-23.025|-177.109|171.4|NEIC|NEIC PDE|NEIC PDE-Q||MW|7.4|WCMT|SOUTH OF FIJI ISLANDS This shows two events larger than magnitude 7 occurred during that month. Other Products That Have Resulted from the Award Datasets made available as part of this project include those managed by the Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology (IRIS) (seismological data), UNAVCO Inc (GPS data), Columbia University (marine geophysical and geochemical data), Caltech (tectonic plate reconstructions), University of Wisconsin (a variety of geological data sets), OpenDap Inc. (oceanographic and atmospheric data sets), UniData Inc (atmospheric data), and San Diego Super Computer Center (hydrologic data). Other Information Additional information may be found at http://earthcube.ning.com/group/web-services-concept-award
