Global Change Information System (GCIS)

ESIP Federation Winter Meeting, 2014

www.globalchange.gov

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Overview

• Background and Status of the GCIS– Who are we?– What are we doing now?– How are we doing it?

• The Future of GCIS– What does everyone think we should do?

• Coordinates Federal research to better understand and prepare the nation for global change

• Prioritizes and supports cutting edge scientific work in global change

• Assesses the state of scientific knowledge and the Nation’s readiness to respond to global change

• Communicates research findings to inform, educate, and engage the global community

The Program:

U.S. Global Change Research Program

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Staff (some of many contributors)

The U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) National Coordination Office (NCO):Curt Tilmes1, Steve Aulenbach2, Brian Duggan2, Justin Goldstein2, Amanda McQueen2,

Julie Morris2, Glynis Lough2

The National Climate Assessment (NCA) Technical Support Unit (TSU):David Easterling3, Paula Hennon4, Angel Li4, April Sides6, Mark Phillips5, Sarah Champion4, Andrew Buddenberg4, Devin Thomas6

Habitat Seven (NCA Web Design and Development):Jamie Herring, Phil Evans, Aires Almeida, Graham Blair

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) Tetherless World Constellation (TWC) (Semantic Web Information Modeling):Peter Fox, Xiaogang Ma, Patrick West, Jin Zheng

Forum One (globalchange.gov Web Design, Development and Integration):Mike Shoag, Michael Rader, John Schneider

1. NASA2. University Corporation for Atmospheric Research3. NOAA/NCDC4. The Cooperative Institute for Climate and Satellites (CICS), North Carolina State University5. National Environmental Modeling and Analysis Center (NEMAC), UNC Asheville6. ERT, Inc.

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Global Change Research Act (1990), Section 106…not less frequently than every 4 years, the Council… shall prepare… an assessment which–• integrates, evaluates, and interprets the findings

of the Program and discusses the scientific uncertainties associated with such findings;

• analyzes the effects of global change on the natural environment, agriculture, energy production and use, land and water resources, transportation, human health and welfare, human social systems, and biological diversity; and

• analyzes current trends in global change, both human- induced and natural, and projects major trends for the subsequent 25 to 100 years.

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Previous National Climate Assessments

Climate Change Impacts on the United States (2000)

Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States (2009)

3rd NCA Draft: http://ncadac.globalchange.gov

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Global Change Information System(GCIS)

Long Term Vision:The Global Change Information System (GCIS) is intended to eventually become a unified web based source of authoritative, accessible, usable and timely information about climate and global change for use by scientists, decision makers, and the public.

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Global Change Information System(GCIS)

Long Term Vision:The Global Change Information System (GCIS) is intended to eventually become a unified web based source of authoritative, accessible, usable and timely information about climate and global change for use by scientists, decision makers, and the public.

Initial Prototype: Coincident with the release of the Third National Climate

Assessment (NCA), early 2014, the GCIS will support the distribution, presentation and documentation needs of the NCA, integrating that content into the USGCRP web site (globalchange.gov) and demonstrating the potential for GCIS to support the long term vision.

Outline for (public draft!) Third NCA Report• Letter to the American People• Executive Summary: Report Findings• Introduction• Our Changing Climate• Sectors & Sectoral Cross-cuts• Regions & Biogeographical Cross-cuts• Responses

– Decision support– Mitigation– Adaptation

• Agenda for Climate Change Science• The NCA Long-term Process• Appendices

– Commonly Asked Questions– Expanded Climate Science Info

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Regions & Biogeographical Cross-Cuts

Coasts, Development, and Ecosystems

Oceans and Marine Resources

Sectors

• Water Resources• Energy Supply and Use• Transportation• Agriculture• Forestry• Ecosystems and

Biodiversity• Human Health

Sectoral Cross-Cuts• Water, Energy, and Land Use• Urban Systems, Infrastructure,

and Vulnerability• Impacts of Climate Change on

Tribal, Indigenous, and Native Lands and Resources

• Land Use and Land Cover Change

• Rural Communities• Biogeochemical Cycles

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NCA3 Web Site

• NCA3 will be integrated with the new revision of the USGCRP globalchange.gov

• Design goals:– Responsive design compatible with various screen sizes

and devices.– Leverages social media to allow users and partners to

easily share content and visuals.– Expose all elements of NCA3 through web searchable and

downloadable PDF.– Cater to a wide range of users spanning casual public

viewers to scientific researchers. – Link to supporting information behind graphics and key

messages.

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Information Quality Act• Reproducibility means that the information is capable of being substantially reproduced,

subject to an acceptable degree of imprecision. For information judged to have more (less) important impacts, the degree of imprecision that is tolerated is reduced (increased). With respect to analytic results, "capable of being substantially reproduced'' means that independent analysis of the original or supporting data using identical methods would generate similar analytic results, subject to an acceptable degree of imprecision or error.

• Transparency is not defined in the OMB Guidelines, but the Supplementary Information to the OMB Guidelines indicates (p. 8456) that "transparency" is at the heart of the reproducibility standard. The Guidelines state that "The purpose of the reproducibility standard is to cultivate a consistent agency commitment to transparency about how analytic results are generated: the specific data used, the various assumptions employed, the specific analytic methods applied, and the statistical procedures employed. If sufficient transparency is achieved on each of these matters, then an analytic result should meet the reproducibility standard." In other words, transparency - and ultimately reproducibility - is a matter of showing how you got the results you got.

http://www.cio.noaa.gov/services_programs/IQ_Guidelines_011812.html

Complete Traceability for NCA Content

Traceable Sources

Traceable Data

• References• Image sources • Data sources

• Link to datasets • Complete metadata

Traceable Processes

• Description of methods

• Access to process info & review

Traceable Tools

Transparency ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Reproducibility

• Access to computer code

• Description of systems and platforms

Easi

er . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .H

arde

r

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Data and The National Climate AssessmentThe Challenge

• More than 250 named authors (>1000 contributing!)• Approximately 1300 pages• 30 Chapters• 6 Appendices• Approximately 300 figures• More than 600 images• Approximately 83 data sources used across as many

as 235 instances*

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Data and The National Climate AssessmentThe Solution

• Defined categories of information within the report:– Figure– Image– Data Source

• Build a process for collecting source information that will satisfy IQA and HISA requirements:– Named sources and contacts for every figure, image, and data source– Web-based survey that requests inputs that address transparency

and reproducibility and build a foundation for providing the Metadata ISO 19115 standard

– IT infrastructure that connects and promotes automation between the web-based survey, a structured data server (SDS)/GCIS, and publication to an official, interactive NCA web site

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Data and The National Climate AssessmentThe Solution

globalchange.govwebsite

StructuredData

Server

NCA ResourcesSite Web Form

ATRAC/XMLFile Generator

Metadata Entry

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Data Set metadata for a figure from the public draft

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GCIS Structured Data Server• Capture – Obtain from a variety of sources: manual input by

trusted parties – support staff, agency partners, data centers; automated harvesting from publishers, agency data centers, etc.

• Identify – Assign persistent, resolvable, controlled identifiers to each element.

• Organize – Capture, discover and represent relationships between elements, including across various types of elements; across data centers; and across agency boundaries.

• Present – Provide machine accessible interfaces to retrieve structured metadata, and to search/data mine it.

• Maintain – Develop tools and processes to ensure quality and integrity of database contents over time.

http://data.globalchange.gov

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Global Change Content Elements

• Reports, Figures, Images, Research Papers, Journals, Measurements, Datasets, Instruments, Agencies, Projects, People, Models, Algorithms, …

• Findings – “Climate is changing.” “Sea Level is Rising.”

• Concepts: “Impacts of Climate Change on Human Health” “Adaptation”

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Certain types of extreme weather events have become more frequent and intense, including heat waves, floods, and droughts in some regions. The increased intensity of heat waves has been most prevalent in the western parts of the country, while the intensity of flooding events has been more prevalent over the eastern parts. Droughts in the Southwest and heat waves everywhere are projected to become more intense in the future.

• ATMOSPHERIC/OCEAN INDICATORS > EXTREME WEATHER

• EXTREME WEATHER > EXTREME PRECIPITATION

• PRECIPITATION > PRECIPITATION RATE• EXTREME WEATHER > HEAT/COLD WAVE

FREQUENCY/INTENSITY• NATURAL HAZARDS > HEAT• NATURAL HAZARDS > FLOODS, • PRECIPITATION > PRECIPITATION AMOUNT• PRECIPITATION >RAIN• SURFACE WATER > FLOODS• ATMOSPHERIC PHENOMENA > DROUGHT,• EXTREME WEATHER > EXTREME DROUGHT, • NATURAL HAZARDS > DROUGHTS

GCMD v8.0Sample finding:

Global Change Keywords (GCMD)

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Machine Accessible Metadata

globalchange.govwebsite

StructuredData

Server

NCA ResourcesSite Web Form

ATRAC/XMLFile Generator

GCIS Database/API

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• RESTful API at data.globalchange.gov• URLs correspond to ontology URIs• Primary storage : RDBMS

(PostgreSQL/PostGIS)• Representation is serialized (for JSON) or used

in templates (for Turtle)• Turtle representation is exported into a triple

store (Virtuoso) which provides a SPARQL endpoint.

(a) Classes and properties representing a brief structure of the draft NCA3

GCIS Ontology (version

1.2)

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(b) Classes and properties relevant to the findings of the draft NCA3 and each chapter in it

(c) Classes and properties about sensors, instruments, platforms, and algorithms, etc. through which datasets are generated

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A few classes are asserted as sub-classes of PROV-O classes

Full GCIS Ontology documents are available at: http://tw.rpi.edu/web/project/gcis-imsap/GCISOntology

SPARQL Example

• http://data.globalchange.gov/examples

• Find publications from which figure 2.26 (global-slr) in the draft nca3 was derived.

• select ?y FROM <http://data.globalchange.gov>• where {• <http://data.globalchange.gov/report/nca3draft/chapter/our-changing-climate/figure/

global-slr> gcis:hasImage ?img .• ?img prov:wasDerivedFrom ?y• }

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Data and GCISThe Future

globalchange.govwebsite

StructuredData

Server

• Coordinates Federal research to better understand and prepare the nation for global change

• Prioritizes and supports cutting edge scientific work in global change

• Assesses the state of scientific knowledge and the Nation’s readiness to respond to global change

• Communicates research findings to inform, educate, and engage the global community

The Program:

U.S. Global Change Research Program

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Two Parallel Paths

Traceable Sources

Traceable Data

• References• Image sources • Data sources

• Link to datasets • Complete metadata

Traceable Processes

• Description of methods

• Access to process info & review

Traceable Tools

1. Third National Climate Assessment (NCA3)

• Access to computer code

• Description of systems and platforms

2 . GCIS

Two Parallel Paths

Traceable Sources

Traceable Data

• References• Image sources • Data sources

• Link to datasets • Complete metadata

Traceable Processes

• Description of methods

• Access to process info & review

Traceable Tools

1. NCA3 release

• Access to computer code

• Description of systems and platforms

2 . Populate GCIS

Questions and Comments

For more information, visit http://www.globalchange.gov