Application of ESE Data and Tools to Air Quality Management: Services for Helping the Air Quality Community use ESE Data (SHAirED)

The goal of this REASoN applications and technology project is to deliver and use Earth Science Enterprise (ESE) data and tools in support of air quality management. Its scope falls within the domain of air quality management and aims to develop a federated air quality information sharing network that includes data from NASA, EPA, US States and others. Project goals were achieved through a access of satellite and ground observation data, web services information technology, interoperability standards, and air quality community collaboration. In contributing to a network of NASA ESE data in support of particulate air quality management, the project will develop access to distributed data, build Web infrastructure, and create tools for data processing and analysis. The key technologies used in the project include emerging web services for developing self describing and modular data access and processing tools, and service oriented architecture for chaining web services together to assemble customized air quality management applications. The technology and tools required for this project were developed within DataFed.net, a shared infrastructure that supports collaborative atmospheric data sharing and processing web services. Much of the collaboration was facilitated through community interactions through the Federation of Earth Science Information Partners (ESIP) Air Quality Workgroup. The main activities during the project that successfully advanced DataFed, enabled air quality applications and established community-oriented infrastructures were: develop access to distributed data (surface and satellite), build Web infrastructure to support data access, processing and analysis create tools for data processing and analysis foster air quality community collaboration and interoperability

Social awareness in pervasive communities for collaborative work

Future pervasive environments will take into consideration physical and digital social relations. Nowadays it is important use to collective intelligence, where the interpretation of context information can be harnessed as input for context-aware applications, especially for group collaboration. The use of collective intelligence represents new possibilities but also new challenges in terms of collective information for adaptability and personalization in intelligent environments. This paper presents a collaborative context-aware framework focusing on social matching capabilities for session formation in collaborative activities

A context-aware framework for CSCW applications in enterprise environments

Future pervasive environments will take into consideration physical and digital social relationships. Nowadays it is important to use collective intelligence, where the interpretation of context information can be harnessed as input for context-aware applications, especially for group collaboration. For collaborative applications this represents opportunities, but also new challenges in terms of using collective information for adaptability and personalization in pervasive environments. This paper presents the challenges in design and development of a context-aware framework CSCW supporting pro-behaviour capabilities in pervasive communities

NNIP

"In January 2001, the Pew Environmental Health Commission called for the creation of a coordinated public health system to prevent disease in the United States by tracking and combating environmental health threats. In response, the U.S. Congress appropriated funding to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Fiscal Year (FY) 2002. This funding enabled CDC to develop the National Environmental Public Health Tracking Program (referred to as Tracking Program). The purpose of the CDC's Tracking Program is to establish a nationwide tracking network to obtain integrated health and environmental data and use it to provide information in support of actions that improve the health of communities. CDC is establishing the Tracking Network by drawing from a wide range of stakeholders with expertise from federal, state, and local health and environmental agencies; nongovernmental organizations (NGOs); state public health and environmental laboratories; and schools of public health. The difference between the Tracking Program and the Tracking Network is that the Tracking Program is much broader and includes not only the Tracking Network but the people, resources, and program management involved in building this network. The Tracking Network is a discrete product of the Tracking Program. The Tracking Program can use data gathered from the Tracking Network to identify areas and populations most likely to be affected by environmental contamination and to provide important information on the health and environmental status of communities. Analyses of data from the Tracking Network will provide valuable information on changes or trends in levels of pollutants, population exposure, and occurrence of noninfectious health effects and enable environmental public health practitioners and researchers to examine the possible relations among them. The information can be used to drive public health policy and actions that ultimately will reduce the burden of adverse health effects on the American public. This document, CDC's National Environmental Public Health Tracking Program: National Network Implementation Plan (NNIP), outlines the path that the Tracking Program is taking to develop and implement the Tracking Network over the next 5 years. The plan supports achieving success in both immediate and long-term time frames while providing direction and guidance to the many stakeholders who contribute to the Tracking Network's ongoing development as well as the overall program's implementation. The NNIP gives insight into the topics and approaches that lead to improved network performance, sustainability, quality, and focus. The NNIP outlines CDC's strategy for developing and implementing the Tracking Network by clarifying functions and components and describing approaches to developing the components. Specifically, the NNIP describes the background, context, needs, and goals of the Tracking Network; outlines the principal functions and components of the Tracking Network; discusses the steps needed to implement the components; and identifies the entities responsible for taking the implementation steps." - p. iiiExecutive summary -- 1. Introduction -- 2. What are the functions and uses of the tracking network? -- 3. What are the components of the tracking network? -- 4. How is the tracking network accessed? -- 5. What services does the tracking network provide? -- 6. What content is on the tracking network? -- 7. Implementation activities -- Appendix A: Summary of activities by responsible entities for tracking network development -- Appendix B: Overview of NNIP development -- Appendix C: Acronyms and abbreviationsTitle from PDF title screen (CDC, viewed Dec. 29, 2011)."August 2006.""C5116250."Available via the World Wide Web as an Acrobat .pdf file (PDF 1.27 MB, 71 p.)

Pervasive CSCW for smart spaces communities

Future pervasive environments will take into consideration not only individual users' interest, but also social relationships. In today's scenarios, the trend is to make use of collective intelligence, where the interpretation of context information can be harnessed as input for pervasive systems. Therefore, social CSCW applications represent new challenges and possibilities in terms of use of group context information for adaptability and personalization in pervasive computing. The objective of this paper is to present two enterprise scenarios that support collaboration and adaption capabilities through pervasive communities combined with social computing. Collaborative applications integrated with pervasive communities can increase the activity's quality of the end user in a wide variety of tasks

Information-Communication Technologies as an Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) Tool for Sustainable Development

Sustainability is a crucial and at the same time vital approach for satisfying future generations’ rights on natural resources. Toward this direction, global policies, supported by international organizations such as UNESCO and its international science programs, foster sustainable development as principal concept for the management of various thematic areas including the environment. The present work promotes the integration of information-communication technologies (ICTs) in the water resources management field as a state of the art concept that sets the basis for sustainable development at global scale. The research focuses on the ICTs contribution to the evolution of scientific and technological disciplines, such as satellite earth observations, real time monitoring networks, geographic information systems, and cloud-based geo information systems and their interconnection to integrated water resources management. Moreover, selected international research programs and activities of UNESCO International Hydrology Programme (IHP) are synoptically but comprehensively being presented to demonstrate the integration of the technological advances in water resources management and their role toward sustainable development

A context-aware framework for collaborative activities in pervasive communities

Pervasive environments involve the interaction of users with the objects that surround them and also other participants. In this way, pervasive communities can lead the user to participate beyond traditional pervasive spaces, enabling the cooperation among groups taking into account not only individual interests, but also the collective and social context. In this study, the authors explore the potential of using context-aware information in CSCW application in order to support collaboration in pervasive environments. In particular this paper describes the approach used in the design and development of a context-aware framework utilizing users' context information interpretation for behaviour adaptation of collaborative applications in pervasive communities

Building a Texas Water Data Hub as a model for National Water Data Infrastructure

Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable (FAIR) water data is a buzz word in the industry for good reason (Making Public Data FAIR, 2018). Without these objectives, poor water data across the United States will continue to cripple the ability of decision makers to manage and develop sustainable practices (Building Data Infrastructure, 2022). In an effort to implement these standards, this research was designed to first understand the past and current water data infrastructure throughout Texas and the United States and then create a findable, accessable, interoperable, and reusable (FAIR) water data hub (Making Public Data FAIR, 2018). An important part of this effort was to include stakeholders and decision makers from the water data industry. This research provides an overview of initial data collection and follows with detailed updates to water categorization and standards, stakeholder engagement and best practices, the creation of the Texas Water Data Hub and finally, recommendations to expand this state effort to a national level. The discussion speaks to the complexity of organizing water data due to the overlapping needs of such a project. The conclusion points out the additional challenges to scaling up these procedures to a national level. All of these efforts are part of building FAIR water data and is essential in our increasing need and care of water