Advanced Grid Interfaces for Environmental eScience in the Lab and in the Field

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Advanced Grid Interfaces for Environmental
e-Science in the Lab and in the Field

• Chris Greenhalgh (cmg_at_cs.nott.ac.uk)
• Steve Benford (sdb_at_cs.nott.ac.uk)
• Salvatore Spinello (S.Spinello_at_cs.ucl.ac.uk)

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• Interweaving Digital and Physical interaction
• Experience projects, e.g.
• City CityWide mixed reality visiting and
  gaming
• AmbientWood mixed reality field study
• Carlisle contextually appropriate technology
• Home provocative design of domestic products
• Infrastructure challenges
• Adaptive infrastructure (e.g. EQUIP)
• Devices
• information appliances, embedded, wearable
• Understanding interaction

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Project structure

• Antarctic freshwater lake ecology application
• (very) Remote sensing
• Modelling and visualisation
• Urban pollution application
• Using national data archives
• Visualisation in context
• Everyones a scientist
• External interactions, e.g. GGF ACE-RG
• (See also EQUATOR/MIAS project)

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Project distinctives

• Focus on Science in the field
• Scientists who are remote from the grid
• Access to grid facilities when the connections
  are limited or occasional
• Small and mobile devices sensors and displays
• Public understanding of science
• RCA and U.Sussex
• Public participation in science

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Supporting the Antarctic Scientist

• Johanna Laybourn-Parry investigating carbon
  cycling in freshwater and saline lakes in eastern
  Antarctica. They need to build a big picture of
  Antarctic lake systems which are responding to
  climate change very quickly
• Currently field scientists are poorly supported
  with limited links
• Measurements taken then returned to base then
  annotated and models build then new project 2-3
  years lifecycle

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Davis Station

• Australian base provides support for the
  scientists
• A range of experiments run from different
  stations
• Measures are some distance from the base

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DavisStation
CrookedLake
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Current approach

• Scientist based in Davis Station
• Regular visits to crooked lake (20km)
• Measurements taken and manual recorded
• Collated at Davis
• Sent back using excel spreadsheets
• Difficult to alter measurements or to correlate
  with other measurements.

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Linking to the remote site

• Remote device deployed to take readings
• Readings relayed to Davis (via IRIDIUM)
• Readings moved from Davis to the Grid

The Grid
Remote Measurement
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Initial design
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Status (Nov.2002)

• Device has been designed, built and shipped out
• Staff (short-term RA long-term PhD) shipping
  out now
• PhD returns Apr. 2004
• Initial intensive data capture Dec./Jan. 2003

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Developing support

• Use of remote sensors (rather than remote
  sensing).
• Need to merge diverse information together to
  produce predictive models, or real time models
  during a project, rather than at the end
• Use of mobile devices to link scientists in the
  field and those developing models.
• Variability of links and management of data to
  link field scientist, modeller and simulations

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Environmental Science in the City

• Distributed real-time sensors
• traffic and pedestrian movement, weather, air
  pollution, noise levels
• Real time data fusion with other relevant data
• data entry by scientists/officials in the field
• predefined models and processes
• Current focus is on how to present this
  information

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Ordnance Survey Land-Line.Plus
N

• Land-Line.Plus digital map data is digitised from
  Ordnance Survey Large Scales maps and surveys
  which show the accurately surveyed positions of
  the natural and man-made features of the
  topography.
• The data includes outlines and divisions of
  buildings, land parcel boundaries, road kerbs,
  rivers and water features.
• It is derived from three source scales of mapping
  
• Urban (11,250 scale) - major towns and cities
• Rural (12,500 scale) - smaller towns, villages
  and developed rural areas
• Moorland (110,000 scale) - mountain and moorland
  areas

500 m
E
500 m
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3D Reconstruction of an area around St.Paul
Cathedral.
Buildings, streets, pavements, water and parks
are recognised. The height values of the
buildings are proportional to their area.
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A more detailed model can be imported easily
using the global coordinates of the Ordnance
Survey
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Information visualization
For each point, grey values give the scalar
quantity of pollution
Position of the static stations that give the
input values to construct the model
The height of the blue lines gives the confidence
of the extrapolated value
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In the City next steps

• Public understanding activities
• Remote access to visualisations?
• Addition of handheld sensors
• Everyone is a scientist

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GGF ACE-RG activities to date

• Distributed collaborative visualisation test
• EQUIP plus visualisation components
• Nottingham (RealityCentre) UCL (Reactor)
• Mini-AG node at Nottingham
• GGF-5 RG meeting
• Security for AG collaboration
• AG v.2
• Speaker PC member for WACE2002
• EQUIP infrastructure

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Summary

• Focus on the remote scientist
• Data gathering from remote locations
• Data access, visualisation and collaboration from
  remote locations
• Focus on the public
• Public understanding of science
• Public participation in sciene
• Stretches the existing views of the Grid and
  eScience and provides support for a broader set
  of scientists.