Matthew B. Jones

National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS)University of California Santa Barbara

Advancing Software for Ecological ForecastingMarch 25, 2014

Software for Ecological Synthesis

Ocean Health Index (OHI)O

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The “long-tail” of science

Heidorn, P. 2008. doi:10.1353/lib.0.0036

https://goa.nceas.ucsb.edu

https://knb.ecoinformatics.org/

Data HeterogeneityHeterogeneity HighLow

•Tight coupling•Simple subsetting•Explicit semantics

•Loose coupling•Hard subsetting•Limited semantics

Data set size LowHigh

Diverse Analysis and Modeling

• Wide variety of analyses used in ecology and environmental sciences

– Statistical analyses and trends– Rule-based models– Dynamic models (e.g., continuous time)– Individual-based models (agent-based)– many others

• Implemented in many frameworks– R, Matlab, SAS, SPSS, Jump, C, Python, Fortran

Kepler

DMP-Tool

Software & Data Interoperability

Plan

Collect

Assure

Describe

Preserve

Discover

Integrate

Analyze

•Produce an open-source scientific workflow system• Design, share, and execute scientific workflows

•Support scientists in a variety of disciplines• e.g., biology, ecology, oceanography, astronomy

•Features• Data access• Cross analytical packages• Documentation• Provenance tracking• Model archiving and sharing

Scientific workflows promote interoperability

Why workflows?

• Executability• Replicability• Reproducibility• Transparency• Modularity• Reusability• Provenance

How do we harness the long tail?

• Efficient data federation

• Interoperable software workflows

• Central search for discovery

• Just-in-time data integration– Loose coupling– Schema-less storage