Enhancing Research Projects with Environmental Informatics and Web Technologies

1
Enhancing Research Projects with Environmental
Informatics and Web Technologies

• Stefan Falke and Erin Robinson
• EECE
• April 24, 2008

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Static versus Dynamic Research Projects
Dynamic
Static

• Email only
• Powerpoint slides
• Pdf reports
• Sharing/publication only of final results

• Email shared web workspaces
• Screencasts, WebEx
• Multi-author content creation
• Sharing/publication of workflow (data to
  information)

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What does the Web bring to Research?

• Sharing and communication of research from
  initial to interim to final results
• Connections to related research and researchers
• Easier ways to document, augment and archive the
  research project
• Richer research team interactions

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Environmental Informatics

• The science, engineering and practice of the
  creation, exchange and use of data, information
  and knowledge relevant to environmental
  researchers, managers and the interested public.
  Cross-disciplinary across computer, information,
  environmental, geographical, and social sciences.

Wisdom
Knowledge
Evidence
Data
Information
Adapted from Bolstad, 2005
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Web 2.0

• Term coined by OReilly in 2003 to describe the
  rise of
• user-generated content
• folksonomy
• on-line collaboration between users
• Web 2.0 tools emphasize
• Blogging
• Tagging
• Commenting
• Modifying
• Augmenting
• The Participatory Web it is easy to publish
  your own content
• User interaction with web has expanded from
  one-way information download to include
  user-driven information content Web 2.0
• Within the science and engineering domains, this
  next phase of the web is referred to as
  cyberinfrastructure, e-science, and service
  oriented science.
• new capabilities for sharing information,
  conducting research in a distributed environment,
  and achieving new insights that would have taken
  longer, or not occurred at all, in independent
  organizations.

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Data Sources

• Observations Models
• Surface
• Satellite
• Forecasts
• News
• Blogs (Technorati)
• What you collect and generate

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RSS Feeds

• Really Simple Syndication
• Share content between websites when new
  information is available
• Need RSS Feeds to subscribe to
• More Information

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Del.icio.us

• Social bookmarking tools
• Storing bookmarks on-line, publicly, with a
  folksonomy categorization
• Can tag the bookmarks for others
• Collectively collect of sites/resources/online
  texts using particular set of tags (S. Cal
  Example)
• Has an RSS feed for all pages
• More information

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Online Photo Sharing Flickr

• Online photo management and sharing tool
• Allows tagging, commenting and organizing photos
  (S. Cal Ex.)
• Has an RSS feed
• More Information

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Blogs

• A website that can be individually edited
• Gives everyone space to share news blog posts
• Readers can comment
• Blogs can be linked and cross-referenced
  (backlinking)
• Has both RSS feed from the blog and can embed
  other feeds inside the blog (Example)
• Can search blogs through Tech.no.rati or Google
  Blog Search
• More Information

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Screencasts and YouTube

• Screencasts are simple demonstrations used to
  show instead of tell
• Video blogging
• Screen capture
• Presentations
• YouTube allows you to publish your screencast,
  the same way flickr allows you to publish photos
• Videos can be tagged, commented on, and shared
• More Information Screencasts YouTube

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Skype and WebEx

• Skype is a Voice over IP service (Internet Phone)
  
• Skype-to-Skype is Free and Skype-to-Phone has
  lower international rates
• WebEx is a way to share your desktop
• More Information Skype WebEx

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Wikis

• Wikis are collaborative web sites where anyone
  with the proper permission can create, edit and
  organize the pages.
• They are good for
• Aggregating and archiving group knowledge
• Connecting people with similar interests
• Can act as an RSS Aggregator
• S. Cal Page
• More Information

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Google Sites http//sites.google.com

• Google sites is a cross between a Portal, Blog
  and wiki
• Using different kinds of pages it can be any of
  the above
• Easy editing
• All Google apps work in conjunction with the
  sites (Calendar, Docs)
• More Information

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Portals

• Can act as an RSS Aggregator
• More Information

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Mashups

Mashups - applications constructed by combining
services from disparate sources
Top Mashup APIs - All
Top Mashup APIs Last 14 Days

• Web services approach uses standards-based
  interfaces for accessing and working with data.
  Next steps go beyond searching and visualizing
  data to include data processing and analysis
  services.
• More Information

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Weatherbonk.com
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Southern California Wildfires
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Mashing Mashups, the value chain
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Southern California Smoke
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How to get started

• Google sites?
• Explore the links provided in these slides
• Figure out how you want to communicate prior to
  China trip, during trip and after you return
• Find coordinators/facilitators in your group
  who can set up the web technology and initiative
  group content creation and interaction
• This is far from an exact science. What youll be
  doing will help define how the web is most
  effectively used in environmental research.
• What you create will be reused in subsequent
  trips and research projects