Towards a service-oriented e-infrastructure for multidisciplinary environmental research

Research e-infrastructures are considered to have generic and thematic parts. The generic part provids high-speed networks, grid (large-scale distributed computing) and database systems (digital repositories and data transfer systems) applicable to all research commnities irrespective of discipline. Thematic parts are specific deployments of e-infrastructures to support diverse virtual research communities. The needs of a virtual community of multidisciplinary envronmental researchers are yet to be investigated. We envisage and argue for an e-infrastructure that will enable environmental researchers to develop environmental models and software entirely out of existing components through loose coupling of diverse digital resources based on the service-oriented achitecture. We discuss four specific aspects for consideration for a future e-infrastructure: 1) provision of digital resources (data, models & tools) as web services, 2) dealing with stateless and non-transactional nature of web services using workflow management systems, 3) enabling web servce discovery, composition and orchestration through semantic registries, and 4) creating synergy with existing grid infrastructures

Using Data Lake Stack in Animal Sciences

Big Data is a theme that receives a lot of attention, and is often characterised as managing and analysing large datasets to reveal new valuable patterns. In the livestock domain, big data is also becoming more common and is being anchored into the mind-set of researchers, due to, for example, sensors generating ..

How to Start an Environmental Software Project

How to lay the grounds for interdisciplinary teams to start communicating and collaborating effectively remains an obstacle for many environmental software efforts. In this work, a structured, participatory interactive method is introduced: The Inception Workshop aims to assist interdisciplinary teams at the start-up stage of an environmental software project, with the goal to explore the solution space and for early requirements analysis. It is an ice-breaker event to engage heterogeneous actors to open up, express their interests, and start working together to identify and solve common problems. Two installations of the workshop were conducted, and participant familiarity to the problem and technologies involved were captured with pre- and post-workshop questionnaires. Participant responses proved statistical significance in increasing participant confidence with concepts across disciplines

System for the interconnection of sensors with processed information providing through the semantic diffusion of knowledge (SDF)

The present invention relates to a system interconnecting sensors with processed information providing in one or several final applications via the semantic diffusion of knowledge. The mentioned herein system establishes the interaction of sensors with metrological stations and the pre-processing of registrations in a distribution environment composed of decision nodes, which are arranged in different levels and their number is defined by the final application. The information flows from the sensors to the final user applications through the levels, the information being diffused to all decision nodes where the information will be processed adequately. In this way, the information is not flowing in one-way direction (from the entry to the exit of the system) but diffused through the decision nodes of each level. With the semantic diffusion of the knowledge, the capabilities of the system for the providing of pre-processed and valid information are enlarged with multiplied profits

System for the interconnection of sensors with processed information providing through the semantic diffusion of knowledge (SDF)

The present invention relates to a system interconnecting sensors with processed information providing in one or several final applications via the semantic diffusion of knowledge. The mentioned herein system establishes the interaction of sensors with metrological stations and the pre-processing of registrations in a distribution environment composed of decision nodes, which are arranged in different levels and their number is defined by the final application. The information flows from the sensors to the final user applications through the levels, the information being diffused to all decision nodes where the information will be processed adequately. In this way, the information is not flowing in one-way direction (from the entry to the exit of the system) but diffused through the decision nodes of each level. With the semantic diffusion of the knowledge, the capabilities of the system for the providing of pre-processed and valid information are enlarged with multiplied profits

A Sensor Observation Service Extension for Internet of Things

This work contributes towards extending OGC Sensor Observation Service to become ready for Internet of Things, i.e. can be employed by devices with limited capabilities or opportunistic inter- net connection. We present an extension based on progressive data transmission, which by-design facilitates selective data harvesting and disruption-tolerant communication. The extension economizes resources, while respects the SOS specification requirement that the client should have no a-priori knowledge of the server capabilities. Empirical experiments in two case studies demonstrate that the extension adds little overhead and may lead to significant performance improvements in cer- tain cases, as for irregular timeseries. Also, the proposed extension is not invasive and backwards compatible with legacy clients