The Challenge:
To provide a user-driven platform for biogeoscience researchers to store and share ground-based sensor array data regardless of their location.
Cybera’s Solution:
The Geospatial Cyberinfrastructure for Environmental Sensing (GeoCENS) project is a CANARIE NEP v2 project that will build an interactive web-based portal for scientific analysis and social networking among the biogeoscience research community. Scientists from this community rely on ground-based sensors to collect data for analysis and to monitor changes in all forms of environment, including climate, water, and biological species. Currently, individual research groups use their own sensors for collecting data.
The GeoCENS portal will allow scientists to remotely contribute their research data and knowledge into a combined system with an innovative two and three-dimensional graphic interface. Instead of deploying numerous sensors of their own, scientists and research groups will be able to spend more time analyzing and re-purposing the data shared within the portal. Various data sources will be accessible in historical and real-time, and users will be able to compare, remotely control, and analyze data sources from specific geographical areas.
The portal will be developed inline with the Open Geospatial Consortium’s Sensor Web Enablement service standards and upon the NASA World Wind Java Standard Development Kit (SDK). GeoCENS is a continuation of the Cybera pilot project, Cyberinfrastructure for Monitoring Biogeosciences Processes in the Rockies.
Cyberinfrastructure at Work:
The GeoCENS project demonstrates the following cyberinfrastructure technologies:
- Advanced networks to transfer and share data sources from geographically dispersed participants
- Data storage and management capabilities
- Remote sensors used to collect environmental data
- Web 2.0 and collaboration tools to enable scientists to communicate and share information
How this Project Affects You:
Canadians stand to benefit from the GeoCENS project, as the breakthrough findings enabled by this portal will shed light on how our social and economic activities impact the earth's ecosystem. Although the portal is being designed specifically for the needs of the biogeoscience research community, there are plans to make it available to the public further down the road. The objective is for anyone with an interest in biogeoscience, such as a school group, to be able to log into the portal, use a three dimensional virtual globe system, similar to Google Earth, and browse the areas scientists are studying.
Investment:
This nearly $1.1 million project is jointly funded by Cybera and CANARIE.
Partners:
- Biogeosciences Institute, University of Calgary
- California Biodiversity Centre, University of California, Berkeley
- CANARIE
- Centre for Hydrology, University of Saskatchewan
- Cybera
- Department of Biological Sciences, University of Cincinnati
- National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON), Boulder, CO
- Open Geospatial Consortium
Presentations:
Ip3 Workshop, October 15, 2009 (18.1 MB PDF)
