4th GEOSS Science and Technology Stakeholder Workshop
CONCEPTS, TECHNOLOGIES, SYSTEMS AND USERS OF THE NEXT GEOSS
March 24-26, 2015, Norfolk, VA, USA

Scope | Deadlines | Venue | Logistics | Committees | Participation | Output | Abstracts | Registration | Accommodation | Sessions | Schedule | Program



Workshop infos

Co-Located Events

Relevant Links and Documents

Announcements:
  • [April 15, 2015] Date of EV Workshop in Bari, Italy, fixed: The EV workshop organized by the ConnectinGEO project will take place on June 11-12, 2015 in Bari, Italy.
  • [March 24, 2015] Essential Variable Workshop in Bari, Italy: The ConnectinGEO project is organizing a workshop on essential variables for the GEO SBAs in Bari, Italy. The exact date is still tbd, but the most likely dates are June 11-12, 2015. Download the Workshop Flyer ...
  • [March 21, 2015] Breakout Session Questions: Questions to be considered in the breakout sessions are now available. See here for all questions.
  • [March 20, 2015] Weather in Norfolk: The forecast for the weekend and most of the week is indicating that we will have partly sunny weather with a chance of rain towards Thursday and Friday. Day temperatures will be somewhere in the 9 to 18oC range. See the most recent full forecast here.
  • [March 17, 2015] Draft GEO Strategic Plan available: The Implementation Plan Working Group (IPWG) has made available a new version of the Draft Strategic Plan for GEO for 2015 to 2025. Download the pdf ...

 

Serving Users with Enhanced Knowledge: A rapidly changing global society increasingly demands knowledge sharing by utilizing innovative services to generate knowledge from existing information. Technological and information revolutions provide a rapidly evolving foundation for satisfying these needs. The workshop aims to link users' information and knowledge needs with emerging technologies introducing novel concepts and workflows for data and model integration and knowledge generation.

WORKSHOP SCOPE AND OBJECTIVES

The on-going evolution in the modus operandi of doing research and organizing science is largely driven by the many technological and information revolutions that characterizing the present digital era. Earth system scientists need to use and integrate very heterogeneous data and information characterizing various fields of academic study to understand the Earth as a system. Besides data diversity, data volume is dramatically increasing due the new and powerful technologies made available to acquire and share data and information. Advanced remote sensing technologies brought the challenge of data deluge for satellite data analysis and interpretation. Drones encapsulate the logic of (low cost) distributed, ubiquitous monitoring information capture. The convergence of wireless technologies, micro-electromechanical systems and the Internet is providing objects, animals and people with the ability to transfer data over a network without requiring human-to-human or human-to-computer interaction.

The open data revolution is increasingly affecting also digital models and processing algorithms made more and more accessible and interoperable on Internet. GEOSS Users (and their Web applications) need to know more about how to effectively discover and use this huge amount of heterogeneous data and the increasing number of processing services and digital models. There exists a clear need to define information in terms of data, knowledge in terms of information, and decision-support (i.e. wisdom) in terms of knowledge: the DIKW paradigm.

The 4th GEOSS S&T Stakeholder Workshop focused on the scope of the future GEOSS and the concepts and technologies that can support a future-oriented “system of systems” providing observations and practice-relevant knowledge to a wide range of users. Information and knowledge systems are challenged by rapidly developing knowledge needs on the one side and an equally rapid development in (big) data availability not only from traditional sensors but also from a variety of human sensors, the developing Internet of Things (IoT) and Internet of Everything (IoE) scenarios, and the output of increasingly more advanced models. Cloud computing provides any public and private organization with the ability to use data and applications over the Internet instead of hosting, storing, or processing them on locally managed hardware.

In such a fast moving technological and information environment, GEOSS (and in particular its common infrastructure and information system) must be flexible to leverage a never-ending technological revolution. To reinforce GEOSS role and use, anticipating the next revolution is important.

GEOSS (and in particular its common infrastructure and information system) should apply the DIKW patterns and create knowledge; this requires an innovative sustainability and economic paradigm. Public-private-partnerships (PPP) may be considered for that.

Outcomes of the workshop include position papers on various aspects of the future GEOSS, including: the integration of different sensor networks, the handling of the emerging “data super nova”, data patterns recognition to generate information, and principles recognition to generate knowledge.

Participants in the workshop included technology developers; experts in data management, integration, and analysis; developers of knowledge systems and concepts for the linkage between decision making and knowledge; and user representatives.