tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-40491350645705885832024-03-14T17:42:24.858+10:30Soils2SatellitesSoils2SatellitesBenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17775939707761798294noreply@blogger.comBlogger11125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4049135064570588583.post-71911416111746890122013-09-27T12:13:00.001+09:302013-09-27T15:34:15.020+09:30<h3>
Summary</h3>
<h1>
<o:p></o:p></h1>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
We have involved
representative users from targeted user communities through the whole
development process. The users have been
testing the user-facing functionality of
the <a href="http://soils2sat.ala.org.au:8080/ala-soils2sat/login/auth" target="_blank">Soils2Satellites product</a> in an iterative format, with their input driving
the ongoing development of the application. Mostly the user interface worked to
meet user requirements, and the project team has been pleased to see the system
being supported by potential users.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<h3>
Our test users</h3>
<h1>
<o:p></o:p></h1>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><br /></b>
<b>User 1</b> is a
postgraduate at <a href="http://www.adelaide.edu.au/" target="_blank">University of Adelaide</a> who specializes in ecological theory and
genetic and genomic approaches to answering biological questions. They have
worked in weed management and the impact of climate change on invasion
patterns. We expected this user to represent researchers interested in species
invasion and change in the face of climate change.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>User 2</b> is the
Science and Technology Lead for a <a href="http://www.tern.org.au/Multi-Scale-Plot-Network-pg17730.html" target="_blank">TERN MSPN facility</a> and has had a range of
Scientific and Management roles in both the Northern Territory and the South
Australian Government. We expected this user to represent a senior science
focused researcher and University administrator exploring the information in S2S.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>User 3</b> is an
internationally respected environmental scientist who has spent many years
working in the field of conservation ecology in Australia and the USA. Their primary research focus has been identifying ecological traits of
species that are vulnerable to extinction. They have also worked for
several state and federal government agencies. We expected this user to
represent senior academics and researchers and policy making site users.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>User 4</b> is a
field ecologist and researcher. We expected this user to represent ecological
data collectors and providers who could supply information.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<h3>
Functional Testing</h3>
<h1>
<o:p></o:p></h1>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
Prior to our user group becoming involved in testing a particular
component of the application the project team conducted significant functional
testing, to ensure that as many bugs as possible were squashed, leaving users
to focus on the UX and the application’s functionality and workflow. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<h3>
Use Cases</h3>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
Both functional and User testing were performed with
reference to the Use Cases listed below. User testing was performed in a far
more “free form” manner than the Functional testing with less prescription upon
specific activities and in a less structured environment.<br />
<ul>
<li><span style="text-indent: -17.95pt;">Find
Study Location</span></li>
<li><span style="text-indent: -17.95pt;">Find
Study Location Visit</span></li>
<li><span style="text-indent: -17.95pt;">View
Study Location Summary</span></li>
<li><span style="text-indent: -17.95pt;">View
Study Location Visit Summary</span></li>
<li><span style="text-indent: -17.95pt;">View
Sampling Unit Summary</span></li>
<li><span style="text-indent: -17.95pt;">Extract
Study Location/Study Location Visit Data</span></li>
<li><span style="text-indent: -17.95pt;">Compare
Study Locations</span></li>
<li><span style="text-indent: -17.95pt;">Compare Study Location Visit</span></li>
</ul>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo2; text-indent: -17.95pt;">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Users also tested areas of the system, in particular with
reference to the Mapping Interface without any real reference to Use Cases.<br />
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<h4>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 115%;">Find
Study Location & Find Study Location Visi</span><span style="line-height: 115%;">t</span></span></h4>
<h1>
<o:p></o:p></h1>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This functionality allows a user to find one or more study
location(s) matching the search criteria, they have entered. The Search
criteria being either or both of<br />
<ul>
<li><span style="text-indent: -17.95pt;">a
spatial locational area defined by drawing a bounding box on a map or</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; text-indent: -17.95pt;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 7pt; line-height: normal;"> </span></span><span style="text-indent: -17.95pt;">textual
search criteria entered via a text box or selected from a pre-defined list</span></li>
</ul>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
using this functionality returns and displays a list of
matching study locations and visits that can be added to the study
locations/visits list for further review. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; line-height: 115%;">What succeeded:</span></i><span style="font-size: x-small;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: x-small; line-height: 115%;">The technique of searching
for locations via a map interface and then filtering a set of returned values
with further parameters is very familiar to most similar web applications and
the users found this functionality intuitive and easy to use.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; line-height: 115%;">What we learned:</span></i><span style="font-size: x-small;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: x-small; line-height: 115%;">User feedback defined the
amount of summary detail that was to be displayed for each returned study
location and visit found by the search, they also particularly asked for a link
to be included that provides swift access to the Study Location Summary details
for a particular site.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<h4>
View Study Location & Study Location Visits Summary</h4>
<h1>
<o:p></o:p></h1>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This functionality allows a user to view a set of summary
data for either an individual study location or a study location visit. The
user accesses the summaries via the same method of either clicking a specific
link to the summary page from the list of Study Locations and Visits returned
from a Search, or by accessing (via a link) the visit summary page from within
the study location summary or vice versa<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; line-height: 115%;">What succeeded:</span></i><span style="font-size: x-small;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: x-small; line-height: 115%;">Users easily understood
the functionality, i.e. they were able to navigate to the summary pages they
wished to see. Users were also happy with the level of detail in the summary
pages after they had provided input. The Users saw the benefits of the data visualisations
in quickly and simply representing the underlying data.</span><span style="font-size: x-small;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: x-small; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; line-height: 115%;">The users also contributed
to the particular data visualisations in each summary page in terms of the
business logic/rules for each graph/chart and also the design and layout of the
page real estate.</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: x-small; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; line-height: 115%;">What we learned:</span></i><span style="font-size: x-small;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; line-height: 115%;">Initially there were a
number of data items missing from both summary data sets that we subsequently
added to the data displayed when asked to by the users. The formatting and
order of the data displayed was also updated based upon feedback. </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: x-small; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: x-small; line-height: 115%;">We amended the navigation
of the application too to make visits and study locations available in a more
direct fashion by removing some of the hierarchical navigation that had
initially been implemented. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<h4>
View Sampling Unit Summary</h4>
<h1>
<o:p></o:p></h1>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This functionality allows a user to view a particular
sampling unit summary for a particular Study Location Visit. There are a number
of different Sampling Unit types in Soils2Satellites<br />
<ul>
<li><span style="text-indent: -17.95pt;">Basal
Wedge</span></li>
<li><span style="text-indent: -17.95pt;">Point
Intercept</span></li>
<li><span style="text-indent: -17.95pt;">Structural
Summary</span></li>
<li><span style="text-indent: -17.95pt;">Soil
Observation</span></li>
<li><span style="text-indent: -17.95pt;">Soil
Bulk Density</span></li>
<li><span style="text-indent: -17.95pt;">Soil Character</span></li>
</ul>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: 36.0pt; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l2 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -17.95pt;">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Each of these Sampling Units types has a specific set of
data and a set of data visualisations, the Sampling Unit Summary page is
accessed via a link form either a Study Location or Study Location Visit
Summary page.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; line-height: 115%;">What succeeded:</span></i><span style="font-size: x-small;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: x-small; line-height: 115%;">As with the other summary
pages users easily understood the functionality, i.e. they were able to
navigate to the summary pages they wished to see and understood the data they
were being presented within each different Sampling Unit Summary page.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: x-small; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; line-height: 115%;">Users were
also happy with the level of detail in the summary pages after they had
provided input. The users saw the benefits of the data visualisations in
quickly and simply representing the underlying data.</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; line-height: 115%;">The users also contributed
to the particular data visualisations in each summary page in terms of the
business logic/rules for each graph/chart and also the design and layout of the
page real estate.</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: x-small; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; line-height: 115%;">What we learned:</span></i><span style="font-size: x-small;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; line-height: 115%;">Initially there were a
number of data items missing from both summary data sets that we subsequently
added to the data displayed when asked to by the users. The formatting and
order of the data displayed was also updated based upon feedback. </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: x-small; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; line-height: 115%;">The algorithms used for
the Point Intercept Sampling Unit Summary in particular were significantly
influenced by the user feedback as were the colours used in the visualisations
that represent the transect layout – the colours were changed to the actual
colours of substrates recorded in the field. The size of the points
representing the individual Growth forms recorded in the transact are also due
to direct input from the users.</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: x-small; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: x-small; line-height: 115%;">The particular
visualisation showing comparison between Auscover Fractional Cover layer data
and equivalent “Ground Truthing” data from <a href="http://www.tern.org.au/AusPlots-Rangelands-pg17871.html" target="_blank">AusPlots</a>/<a href="http://www.trendsa.org.au/" target="_blank">TREND</a> is also a result of direct input from
users. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<h4>
Extract Study Location/Study Location Visit Data</h4>
<h1>
<o:p></o:p></h1>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A key requirement for <a href="http://soils2sat.ala.org.au:8080/ala-soils2sat/login/auth" target="_blank">Soils2Satellites</a> was for the users to
be able to simply create and extract a set of data derived from the whole S2S
database. Data can be extracted at the Sampling Unit Summary level or for one
or more Study Location Visits. At the visit level standard data about that
visit is included plus data to be extracted can be further filtered to include
one or more or all of the data for the Sampling Units performed during that visit. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; line-height: 115%;">What succeeded:</span></i><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: x-small; line-height: 115%;">The simple extract format
of a single file in .csv format downloaded as a zip file was appreciated by the
Users, as was the creation of a DOI to support re-use of the data. This
functionality successfully re-used technologies from the <a href="http://www.ala.org.au/" target="_blank">ALA</a> and the <a href="http://www.tern.org.au/" target="_blank">TERN HQ</a>
DOI creation functionality. </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; line-height: 115%;">What we learned:</span></i><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; line-height: 115%;">The initial navigation
process to access the extract functionality was altered based upon the user
feedback. An Export button was added to the Search Results screen to allow
users to quickly Search, Access and download data without having to access each
individual Sampling Unit Summary page. </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: x-small; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: x-small; line-height: 115%;">The data made available
from intersecting the environmental layers data with the location of a
particular Study Location was added to the extract data due to User feedback.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<h4>
Compare Study Locations </h4>
<h1>
<o:p></o:p></h1>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This functionality allows a user to view and compare a range
of data values in their raw form and through visualisations for any number of
Study Locations returned from the Searching functionality. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; line-height: 115%;">What succeeded:</span></i><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">The ability to be able to compare a standard set of data
across sites in varying geographical locations in one screen and via a range of
visualisations was seen by the users as a key function of the application.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; line-height: 115%;">What we learned:</span></i><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: x-small; line-height: 115%;">The users contributed to
the particular data visualisations in this page in terms of the business
logic/rules for each graph/chart and also the design and layout of the page
real estate. The identification of the types of data that would “work well
together” as visualisations, that provide a meaningful “view” of a site were
implemented and refined from this user input.
</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<h3>
General Mapping/Spatial Feedback</h3>
<h1>
<o:p></o:p></h1>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
The S2S application contains a fairly standard Mapping
interface using OpenLayers and the Google Maps API, this functionality was
leveraged from the capability provided within the <a href="http://www.ala.org.au/" target="_blank">Atlas Of Living Australia</a>’s
spatial portal. This provides standard map navigation tools along with the
ability to select points visible in the map and add them to a selection list.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
At the request of the users the opacity of the map’s layers
can be altered plus the layer attribute details can be viewed. The mapping
functionality also allows users to build sets of environmental layers (derived
from the full list of environmental layers provided by the ALA) that they can
store and re-use as personal sets of contextual layers during their
searches. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<h3>
Individual User Experiences</h3>
<h1>
<span style="color: black;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4049135064570588583" name="h.gjdgxs"></a><o:p></o:p></span></h1>
<h4>
<b><br /></b></h4>
<h4>
<b>User 1</b></h4>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
User 1 was predominantly involved in identifying the types
of visualisations that would be most valuable to non-ecologically focused users
through making the data in S2S discoverable and in defining how it would be
best to display interesting and significant relationships across the different
data types. This users input was key to defining the data outputs in the
application. <o:p></o:p><br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>“The intuitive
navigation allows me to easily visualise trends in the data that would
otherwise be extremely difficult and time consuming to consider, furthermore,
results are presented in such a way that novel associations can present
themselves – helping to stimulate new ways to think about ecological
associations and identification of genuine and interesting knowledge gaps where
new research can be focussed."</i><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><br /></b></div>
<h4>
<b>User 2</b></h4>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
User 2 was key in providing the scientific understanding and
business rules behind a number of the visualisations in the application in
particular in the Point Intercept Sampling Unit Summary visualisations. This
user was particularly pleased to see that the data generated by <a href="http://www.tern.org.au/AusCover-pg17728.html" target="_blank">Auscover</a> from
its remote sensing activities can be ground truthed by data collected under
<a href="http://www.tern.org.au/AusPlots-Rangelands-pg17871.html" target="_blank">AusPlots</a>/<a href="http://www.trendsa.org.au/" target="_blank">TREND</a> and the correlations or differences in the data be easily and
clearly visualised. They are especially keen to be able to now take the
application further in this area if possible.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><br /></b></div>
<h4>
<b>User 3</b></h4>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This user was predominantly involved in detailing what raw
data for each Study Location and Visit would be relevant for display and
download and how this data was to be grouped together in the application. As with the other users this user was also
involved in providing feedback to the project team around the data
visualisations. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><br /></b></div>
<h4>
<b>User 4</b></h4>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
User 4 commented on how following the implementation of the
data visualisations in the application, it was now possible to demonstrate to
the landowners and managers of the country where the data collection activity
had taken place the value and usefulness of this type of data collection. This
then encourages further access to areas for future re-visits and also for
access to other areas where monitoring surveys may not have taken place before.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>“The <a href="http://soils2sat.ala.org.au:8080/ala-soils2sat/login/auth" target="_blank">Soils toSatellites tool </a>is important in fostering the continuing relationship between
the scientific community and those who grant us access to their land. By
allowing land managers to visualise the data shortly after we’ve collected it
and see how it fits in to a bigger picture, it’s easy for us to show the value
of the work. It can also help landowners to manage their lands, whether to maximise
agricultural productivity, ensure strong conservation outcomes, or a mix of
both.”</i><o:p></o:p></div>
Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com0Adelaide SA, Australia-34.924223016905813 138.58978271484375-35.132582516905813 138.26705921484375 -34.715863516905813 138.91250621484375tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4049135064570588583.post-67141277803622014212013-09-03T15:02:00.001+09:302013-09-03T15:02:41.118+09:30S2S stands out at ALA Science Symposium<div class="MsoNormal">
Congratulations to the Soils-to Satellites (S2S) team for an
excellent example of a successful collaboration between <a href="http://ncris.innovation.gov.au/Pages/default.aspx">National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy</a>(NCRIS) capability . The team showed how different types
of data from different platforms can be integrated and visualised to support reuse by researchers for new scientific enquiry. Some participants considered the presentation by Martin
Pullan, Project Manager at <a href="http://www.tern.org.au/Eco-informatics-pg17733.html">TERN’s Eco-informatics Facility</a> and Peter Doherty,
the Program Manager at the <a href="http://www.ala.org.au/">Atlas of Living Australia</a> (ALA) to be among the best at the
Symposium.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The ALA hosted its first Science
Symposium recently at the <a href="http://www.csiro.au/Portals/Education/Programs/Discovery-Centre.aspx">CSIRO
Discovery Centre</a> in Canberra with 27 speakers presenting on topics from
taxonomy to data infrastructure. Scientists attend many conferences to keep
up-to-date with new developments in their field of study. Often, the gems of new information at any one
conference can be counted on one hand and the S2S incubator project stood out as one of these. A presentation that followed on from our talk by Dr Andrew Treloar, IT Director at the Australian National Data Service (<a href="http://www.ands.org.au/">ANDS</a>) also highlighted the successful collaborative nature of our project and he stated it was his favourite ANDS application development project.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
S2S project although a 'proof of concept' has the potential
to be leading infrastructure for accessing data on Australia’s nature and environments.
A strong data alliance is already in place for further roll out of the application and once it has been released in the next few days we hope you support its ongoing development via this blog.<o:p></o:p></div>
Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4049135064570588583.post-10965198723985094422013-09-03T15:02:00.000+09:302013-09-03T15:02:05.560+09:30Final Post<h3>
<b>1. Introductory Product Information</b></h3>
<br />
Soils-to-Satellites (S2S)<br />
<br />
The tool brings disparate and diverse datasets together into an easy-to-use interface that enables visualisation and comparison. These datasets include ecological and genomics data collected through <a href="http://tern.org.au/AusPlots-Rangelands-pg17871.html" target="_blank">TERN’s Multi-Scale Plot Network</a> and delivered through Eco-informatics’ <a href="http://www.aekos.org.au/" target="_blank">Australian Ecological Knowledge and Observation System (ÆKOS)</a>, remote sensing datasets available through <a href="http://www.auscover.org.au/" target="_blank">AusCover</a>, alongside the spatial and biodiversity information available via the <a href="http://www.ala.org.au/" target="_blank">ALA</a>.<br />
<br />
S2S now enables researchers to explore and display the relationships between these diverse data sets in ways not previously experienced in a single application. For example, users of the tool can display layers of Australian environmental data such as elevation, temperature or soil type, and then ‘drill down’ to view and explore rich ecological and genomics data across those layers.<br />
<br />
<h3>
<b>2. Instructional Product Information</b></h3>
<br />
"Through AusPlots and the Australian Transect Network, we've now surveyed around 300 plots, which represents a wealth of ecological data that we hope will support scientists and managers across Australia. Our data is undeniably valuable, and represents thousands of man hours in some very inaccessible environments. But trying to show potential users the scope of the data we've collected and how it can be combined for useful analysis can be a real challenge. The ability of Soils to Satellites to display and combine the data we've collected in real time, from biomolecular sequences to landforms, allows users to do just that, and make sure that our data is used by others, to the maximum benefit of scientists and the community."<br />
<i> Stefan Caddy-Retalic</i><br />
<i> Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network (TERN)</i><br />
<br />
"Soils to satellites allows to me explore large and complex data sets in a meaningful and dynamic way. As we move towards greater levels of data sharing and maximisation of initial investment in data collection, projects like Soils to Satellites become increasingly important tools that allow us to navigate the wealth of existing data, assess its usefulness and fitness for repurposing, and ultimately access the raw data and all the associated contextual information. Without efficient and intuitive ways to explore the relationships between existing data sets at a range of scales, such as those provided through Soils to Satellites, we will not be able to take full advantage of the considerable scientific knowledge base we have at our finger tips. The intuitive navigation allows me to easily visualise trends in the data that would otherwise be extremely difficult and time consuming to consider, furthermore, results are presented in such a way that novel associations can present themselves – helping to stimulate new ways to think about ecological associations and identification of genuine and interesting knowledge gaps where new research can be focussed."<br />
<i>Eleanor Dormontt</i><br />
<i> Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network (TERN)</i><br />
<br />"Working in projects which collect lots of data, it’s easy to lose sight of where and how the data will be used. As someone who is generating this data in the field, Soils to Satellites represents a major step forward in making sure that the data I collect will be used by others. By providing different ways of visualising complex data, scientists and land managers can understand the relationships between that data in a simple way. This means that data that might otherwise gather dust in an obscure database is available in a simple format for everyone to access. For example, previously labour-intensive comparisons – say between vegetation community structure and soil characteristics (like pH and salt content) are easy, either at a local or continental scale. <br /><br />The Soils to Satellites tool is also important in fostering the continuing relationship between the scientific community and those who grant us access to their land. By allowing land managers to visualise the data shortly after we’ve collected it and see how it fits in to a bigger picture, it’s easy for us to show the value of the work. It can also help landowners to manage their lands, whether to maximise agricultural productivity, ensure strong conservation outcomes, or a mix of both.<br /><br /> Soils to Satellites will only increase in usefulness as a tool as more data becomes available. Information on soil metagenomics, population genetics and leaf area index will build on the current platform to make soils to satellites an indispensable tool for ecologists and land managers alike."<div>
<i>Emrys Leitch</i><br /><i> Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network (TERN)</i><br />
<br />
2.2 <a href="http://soils2sat.ala.org.au:8080/ala-soils2sat/">Links to the actual product</a><br />
<br />
2.3 Source code<br />
<ul>
<li><a href="https://code.google.com/p/ala-soils2sat">Application</a></li>
<li><a href="https://code.google.com/p/ala-soils2sat/source/checkout">Instructions for getting the source</a></li>
<li><a href="https://btill@bitbucket.org/your-username/soils2satellites-ternservices.git">Data Web Services</a><br />(You will need a Bitbucket login to access this public respository)</li>
</ul>
<br />
2.4 <a href="https://ecoinformatics.atlassian.net/wiki/display/SOILS/User+Guide">User Guide</a><br />
<br />
<h3>
3. Product (or Product Components) Re-usability Information</h3>
<br />
The Soils to Satellite application provides a service to researchers, that further represents the potential of integrating major research infrastructure. Data available from TERN Eco-informatics' ÆKOS data portal (raw ecological data) and the Atlas of Living Australia (biodiversity data and spatial products) can be searched, displayed and visualised thanks to an alliance of data custodians who publish their data and products.<br />
<br />
Any data downloaded from SoilsToSatellites can then be re-used outside of the system by ecologically focused researchers<br />
<br />
<h3>
4. Contextual Product Information</h3>
<br />
4.1 Licensing of final product<br />
<ol>
<li>SoilsToSatellites is available under Mozilla Public Licence v1.1</li>
<li>The data downloadable from the application is licenced through</li>
</ol>
<br />
<i>Creative Common By Attribution (CC-BY) Copyright Licence v3.0. This licence lets others distribute, remix and build upon a work, even commercially, as long as they credit the original creator/s (and any other nominated parties)</i><br />
<br />
4.2 Sustainability<br />
<ol>
<li>All the software and data components will be located on NeCTAR infrastructure, initially within the University of Melbourne and then with eResearchSA at the Adelaide node of NeCTAR.</li>
<li>The SoilsToSatellites portal will be maintained in the public domain for 12 months by TERN Eco-informatics and ALA, with support from NeCTAR.</li>
<li>New data will be added to SoilsToSatellites by TERN Eco-informatics staff.</li>
</ol>
<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4049135064570588583.post-63053291839926908012013-06-13T12:45:00.000+09:302013-06-25T16:51:55.799+09:30S2S incubates a data alliance<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Two horses
by working together can pull a load of almost 4 tons. When you combine four
horses, they’re not limited to 8 tons but can pull a whopping 123 tons -15
times as much because they work in unison and maximize synergies. By forming an alliance between data custodians
and infrastructure capabilities, the Soils to Satellites (S2S) incubator
project has leveraged synergies in technical expertise and datasets to create a
web service that’s greater than the sum of its parts.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">Professor
Andy Lowe at <a href="http://www.adelaide.edu.au/">The University of Adelaide</a></span> is a world renowned plant evolutionary
biologist addressing ecological, evolutionary and biosecurity questions using
molecular approaches, and he with funding support from the <a href="http://www.ands.org.au/">Australian National Data Service</a>, has sponsored joint development by TERN
Eco-informatics and the Atlas of Living Australia’s (<a href="http://www.ala.org.au/">ALA</a>) <span lang="EN-US">of the project.</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">‘<span lang="EN-US">S2S is a
ground breaking project because it brings together, through web services,
different types of data from different sources, stored on different platforms,
for researchers to reuse for different scientific purposes’, said Andy. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">‘It
represents the start of a strong data
alliance for environmental data in Australia, and this give us great
opportunities to bring together cutting edge expertise in IT, Ecology and Data
Management to advance science.’<o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Dr John La
Salle, director of ALA, said working on the S2S project was a great opportunity
to further demonstrate the openness of the ALA system. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">For the
first time, the system brings a range of data together from the ALA and <a href="http://www.tern.org.au/Eco-informatics-pg17733.html">TERN Eco-informatics</a>’ Australian Ecological and Knowledge Observation System (<a href="http://www.aekos.org.au/">ÆKOS)</a></span><span lang="EN-US">. These data are a mix of biodiversity,
ecological and genetics data and derived spatial data covering environmental
layers such as landform or climate, and other features derived from remote
sensing technologies and maps of soils. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">‘Having
this rich mix of data available via a single application is a huge benefit to
science, as modellers can work immediately with integrated datasets and save
lots of valuable time,’ says Andy.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">‘We were
able to achieve this breakthrough literally because of our fledgling alliance for
sharing </span>resources and leveraging the “openness” of our systems. Our work
brought together volumes of data and specialist expertise - especially in the
technology and technical infrastructure which underpins <span lang="EN-US">the ALA and ÆKOS. The result is a service that furthers represents
the potential of integrating major research infrastructure.’ <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US">How is this
so? S2S brings in data from a broad range of custodians as shown in the diagram
below. Open remote sensing products are available by the <a href="http://www.bom.gov.au/">Bureau of Meteorology</a> and <a href="http://www.tern.org.au/AusCover-pg17728.html">TERN AusCover</a>.
These have been leveraged by <a href="http://www.csiro.au/">CSIRO</a> and the
ALA, making available valuable spatial layers representing different types of
climate and environmental data. These data can then be further overlaid with
soil maps that are created by CSIRO and <a href="http://www.tern.org.au/Soil-and-Landscape-Grid-of-Australia-pg17731.html">TERN’s Soils and Landscape Grid ofAustralia</a> facility on demand by the
user . Biodiversity data on plant species initially is also integrated into
this system and these data have been contributed to the ALA by its <a href="http://www.ala.org.au/about-the-atlas/atlas-background/atlas-partners/">partners</a> </span><span lang="EN-US">−</span><span lang="EN-US"> Commonwealth and State Herbariums
and Museums, government agencies and the public. The raw ecological plot data available
in ÆKOS presently has databases and datasets contributed by government agencies
and <a href="http://www.tern.org.au/Multi-Scale-Plot-Network-pg17730.html">TERN’s Multi Scaled Plot Network</a> (<a href="http://www.tern.org.au/AusPlots-Rangelands-pg17871.html">AusPlot Rangelands</a> and the <a href="http://www.tern.org.au/Australian-Transect-Network-pg22748.html">AustralianTransect Network </a>–<a href="http://www.trendsa.org.au/">TREND</a>) and will also house a number of additional researcher datasets
in the near future. The genetics data are contributed by the <a href="http://www.boldsystems.org/">Barcode of Life</a>, <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/genbank/">GenBank</a> and
<a href="http://www.bioplatforms.com.au/">BioPlatforms Australia</a> to the ÆKOS. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">S2S will be
launched at the end of this month and is a strong ‘proof of concept’ demonstrating that a system can successfully
integrate disparate data from different platforms. The system has been made
possible through the generous funding support of ANDS and underpinned by strong
collaboration between talented ecological, data and cyberinfrastructure experts.
This service will be developed further
in the future. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The executive director of ANDS, Dr Ross Wilkinson, said ANDS was delighted in the way that the project demonstrates the power of bringing data together to answer new questions.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-D5mIqrCeXaI/UbkvBTmWEJI/AAAAAAAAABU/C1kDPtnJkCI/s1600/Data+Alliance_20130606.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-D5mIqrCeXaI/UbkvBTmWEJI/AAAAAAAAABU/C1kDPtnJkCI/s400/Data+Alliance_20130606.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Soils to Satellite application provides a service to researchers that further represents the potential of integrating major research infrastructure. Data available from TERN Eco-informatics' <span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 14px;">ÆKOS </span>data portal (raw ecological data) and the Atlas of Living Australia (biodiversity data and spatial products) can be searched, displayed and visualised thanks to an alliance of data custodians who publish their data and products.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4049135064570588583.post-73216643490574830882013-04-16T09:54:00.001+09:302013-04-16T09:59:25.201+09:30‘Soils to Satellites’ shines at TERN Symposium<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">The annual </span><a href="http://www.tern.org.au/Welcome-pg24024.html" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">TERN Symposium</span></a><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;"> is an opport<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4049135064570588583" name="_GoBack"></a>unity for
anyone and everyone ecologically-inclined to gather in a single location and
discover what projects the various TERN</span><span class="apple-converted-space" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> </span></span><a href="http://tern.org.au/datalicence/TERN-BY/1.0/" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">facilities</span></a><span class="apple-converted-space" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">have been working on
since the previous year. This year’s event was held over three days in
February, at Old Parliament House, Canberra and featured a host of
prominent guests including plenary speakers </span><a href="http://www.zoo.ox.ac.uk/people/view/may_r.htm" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Lord Robert May</span></a><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;"> (former Chief
Scientist of the UK) and </span><a href="http://www.ecolsoc.org.au/who.html" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Professor Kris French</span></a><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;"> (President of the Ecological Society of
Australia)</span><span class="apple-converted-space" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> </span></span><a href="http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Dr David Schimel</span></a><span class="apple-converted-space" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt;">(Jet Propulsion Lab, NASA) and Professors Andy Lowe
and Stuart Phinn (Associate Science Directors of TERN). The Symposium was
attended by over 350 people from all across Australia, including many
travelling from overseas, demonstrating an increasing interest in Australian
ecosystem science infrastructure and science outputs across the country.</span><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">This year, a presentation on</span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> </span></span><a href="http://www.aekos.org.au/presentations"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">'Soils to Satellite'(S2S)</span></a><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">, a
collaborative project funded by the Australian National Data Service (ANDS) </span></span><span style="font-size: 11pt;">was given by Craig Walker
(Director of the</span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> </span></span><a href="http://tern.org.au/Eco-informatics-pg17733.html"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Eco-informatics Facility</span></a><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> of TERN) and Peter Doherty
(</span><a href="http://www.ala.org.au/"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Atlas of Living Australia</span></a><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> Programme Manager).
The presentation outlined the gains of greater synergies and
collaborations between the</span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> </span></span><a href="http://ncris.innovation.gov.au/Pages/default.aspx"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">NCRIS</span></a><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> capabilities and how S2S
addresses these. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Craig described how the NCRIS capabilities had vast volumes of
data and high levels of expertise especially in advanced technology and
technical infrastructure covering the Australia's environmental information
landscape. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">'For example, the Australian Ecological Knowledge and Observation
System (</span><a href="http://www.aekos.org.au/"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">ÆKOS</span></a><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt;">)</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> built by Eco-informatics
has well-described, raw scientific ecological data as its focus and complements
the Atlas of Living Australia which focuses on data and profiles of species and
specimens (biodiversity data)', said Craig.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">'<span style="color: #222222;">ÆKOS as part of its development has
leveraged ALA's expertise in systematics, biodiversity and spatial platforms.'</span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt;">Peter said the S2S incubator project
demonstrates the integration of disparate data (independent of structure
and standards), as well as strong collaboration and cooperation between
NCRIS capabilities and the value and power of the mature ALA web
services. </span><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt;">'It also contributes to and enriches ANDS Research
Data Australia platform and generates 'real world' feedback for future
iterations'.</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt;">'S2S brings together technical expertise and
technological infrastructure for mutual benefit', agree Craig and Peter.</span><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">'There are many benefits enabling raw ecological
plot and biodiversity data to be explored to support species,
community and ecosystem distribution modelling to address climate change
science questions in new ways not previously possible.'</span></span></div>
<span style="color: #222222; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">
<!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--><br />
<!--[endif]--></span>Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4049135064570588583.post-11461571529510225602013-01-15T14:44:00.001+10:302013-03-28T08:49:03.203+10:30 Post 6. PROJECT OUTPUTS & OUR PRIMARY PRODUCT<span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Soils to Satellites Project delivers a web-based application that allows users to combine and explore data from the Atlas of Living Australia (ALA) and the Terrestrial Ecological Research Network (TERN) ÆKOS application. These data are associated with a range of survey work conducted by TREND and TERN AusPlots and also the ALA’s environmental and species distribution spatial layers. These data are aggregated in the application by reusing and re-implementing the functionality already present in the ALA. - please refer to other posts for details on these data.</span></span><br />
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></b>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This site will allow users to search for data in a number of ways either through “pre-canned” views of data or by building structured queries. Data can be viewed at a summary, aggregated level or at an individual field record level. Result sets can be visualised through a set of tools provided by the ALA whilst the results can also be exported in csv format.</span></b><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Result sets will also be provided as RIF-CS collections to ANDS for further easy discoverability. </span></b><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The code used to create these websites will be available for reuse under a </span><a href="http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">GNU General Public License</span></a><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. All components created by the project team will be available from this </span><a href="https://bitbucket.org/adelaideecoinformatics/soils2satellites-public/src"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Bitbucket site</span></a><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> along with documentation (Use Cases, Architecture diagrams etc. A user reference manual will address operational day to day usage procedures and will explain how to go about using application.) on </span><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><a href="https://drive.google.com/a/ecoinformatics.org.au/#folders/0B9T-hX3tMsLCWm8ybWNiUXA4TUU">Google Drive</a>. </span></b><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The application will be hosted through a </span><a href="https://www.nectar.org.au/research-cloud"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">NeCTAR</span></a><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> node at </span><a href="http://www.eresearchsa.edu.au/"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">e-Research South Australia (eRSA)</span></a><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> at the University of Adelaide</span></b></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">The product itself will be presented or publicised in a number of ways:
</span></span><br />
<ul>
<li style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Press release(s) targeted at the Ecological and Conservation communities and DSIIRTE, that publicise the outcomes and collaborative achievements relating to the project and the associated software tool developed with ANDS funding. As well as highlighting the new research now possible by Prof Andy Lowe’s research group by bringing the Soils to Satellite data sets together in a single application.</span></li>
<li style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Demonstration of the resulting solution at the TERN Annual Symposium, February 2013 by Prof Andy Lowe. Attendees include TERN staff, university researchers, Government decision-makers and policy experts, representatives from peak bodies, and industry sector staff. The value message will focus on potential research that can be conducted with the assistance of the tool that couldn't be done before.</span></li>
<li style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Releases posted through social media channels such as Twitter, LinkedIn, Pintrest and Facebook.</span></li>
</ul>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;">Additionally, the following Demonstrations of Value may be pursued:</span></div>
<br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;">Demonstration of the value of the combinatorial solution for use in policy and natural resource management contexts, e.g. utilising the spatial power of the systematically collected genomics data over environmental gradients to show:</span></li>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;">i) future management implications of temperature change, rainfall, drying for critical issues such as species genetic flow, refugia and evolutionary/extinction potential; &</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;">ii) the value of integrating existing expertise from ALA and TERN for cross-cutting solutions.</span></li>
</ul>
</ul>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;">In his roles as TERN Associate Science Director and Head Science advisor for the SA Department of Water, Environment and Natural Resources (DEWNR), Prof Andy Lowe can assemble key agency decision makers in both funding and policy contexts. Given the timing of governmental budgetary allocations, late 2012/early 2013 would appear to be the most suitable timing.</span><br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;">Endorsements from key direct and indirect stakeholders such as Commonwealth agencies</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; white-space: pre-wrap;">One or more academic papers submitted by the Science Stakeholders (Lowe, Cross, Guerin) by the 2nd quarter (calendar year), 2013 - in recognised journals which reference the integration and analysis enabled by project</span></li>
</ul>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4049135064570588583.post-17281917881852447142012-11-05T13:47:00.000+10:302013-03-28T08:53:59.159+10:30Post 5. KEY TECHNOLOGIES & KEY FEATURES<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqZ0sBwpVrDEAh0wOyX6yD_VouRLnZ6kCjNbr_UHP0qIv7eQYz2v18H8e5gricv9MBDJuLRHXoUzzB27ZBa-TJTEpoau1wIs33IBbI1h362oIZf7_WrgjRA_7gdHNNP-dtPPAZ2UGnEEY/s1600/StS-SimpleArchitectureDiagram.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="High level Architecture diagram" border="0" height="276" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqZ0sBwpVrDEAh0wOyX6yD_VouRLnZ6kCjNbr_UHP0qIv7eQYz2v18H8e5gricv9MBDJuLRHXoUzzB27ZBa-TJTEpoau1wIs33IBbI1h362oIZf7_WrgjRA_7gdHNNP-dtPPAZ2UGnEEY/s400/StS-SimpleArchitectureDiagram.png" title="High level Architecture diagram" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">High level architecture diagram showing interactions between components.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
The crux of this project is the integration of data from <a href="http://www.aekos.org.au/" target="_blank">AEKOS</a> and the <a href="http://www.ala.org.au/" target="_blank">Atlas of Living Australia (ALA).</a><br />
<br />
The Soils to Satellite portal is the integration point. This portal is written using the <a href="http://grails.org/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Grails platform</a> version 2.1 and makes use of:<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li><a href="http://openlayers.org/" target="_blank">OpenLayers</a> version 2.12 javascript mapping library</li>
<li><a href="http://jquery.com/" target="_blank">JQuery</a> version 1.7 javascript library</li>
<li><a href="http://twitter.github.com/bootstrap/" target="_blank">Bootstrap</a> version 2.2.1 front end development framework</li>
</ul>
<div>
This portal relies on web services from <a href="http://www.aekos.org.au/" target="_blank">AEKOS</a> and <a href="http://www.ala.org.au/" target="_blank">ALA</a>. These services are predominantly JSON services and are stateless. Environmental layers are served from ALA using <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_Map_Service" target="_blank">WMS</a> via <a href="http://geoserver.org/homepage.action" target="_blank">Geoserver</a>.<br />
<br />
The development of the portal is being achieved using the <a href="http://www.jetbrains.com/idea/" target="_blank">Intellij IDE.</a><br />
<br />
One of the most important parts of the technology being used are the stateless of the web services and the fact we are favouring <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JSON" target="_blank">JSON</a> as core output. This should hopefully promote re-use by external tools in addition to making consumption of the data from AEKOS and ALA straightforward for the Soils to Satellite portal. The choice of Grails as the core platform for the Soils to Satellite portal has the following benefits:<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>Grails runs on the industry proven <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_virtual_machine" target="_blank">Java Virtual Machine</a> platform</li>
<li>It supports rapid application development</li>
<li>Has a convention over configuration style</li>
<li>Gives an out of the box recongisable structure to software projects with clear separation of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model%E2%80%93view%E2%80%93controller" target="_blank">Model, View and Controller.</a></li>
</ul>
<br />
Development of a user-friendly interface which handles the complexity of ecological data. Presenting this data in a way that is navigable and simple for users to follow will also lead to user satisfaction.</div>
Dave Martinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15236961259181793280noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4049135064570588583.post-16129566346658508432012-11-02T13:46:00.000+10:302013-03-27T16:51:28.119+10:30Post 4. "KEY FACTORS CUSTOMERS WILL USE TO JUDGE THE VALUE OF OUR PRODUCT", i.e. how do you independently measure success?<span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">The Soils to Satellites Project has a number of engaged stakeholders (customers), in particular through the TREND SA project and the Australian Centre for Evolutionary Biology and Biodiversity, who are actively conducting research into ecological questions around the topics of;</span><br />
<span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<br />
<ul>
<li><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">Predicting the impact of climate change on species distribution (Conservation)</span></li>
<li><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">Identifying Biodiversity Hotspots (Conservation / Agriculture)</span></li>
<li><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">Understanding Soil and Vegetation Communities (Agriculture)</span></li>
<li><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">Understanding the Conditions of Ecosystems (Conservation)</span></li>
</ul>
<br />
<span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">It is understood that for these researchers to embrace the S2S tool as a significant addition to their research activities, it will need to become an integral part of their workflows and processes.</span><br />
<span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">It is expected that S2S will improve researcher’s access to the extremely broad range of ecological data that is available from the ALA, TREND SA and TERN AEKOS, by allowing users to quickly and easily visualise relationships between disparate data in S2S.</span><br />
<span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">To do this, S2S provides functionality that allows for the exploration and display of previously undiscovered relationships between disconnected and previously unrelated data sets, through sophisticated spatial and data presentation tools developed in the ALA spatial portal and via the AEKOS Indexing and Search services, which are being re-used in S2S. The system then allows the user downloading this data for further offline analysis and examination in tools such as MATLAB and ‘R’. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">It is anticipated that re-use of these data discovered through S2S will contribute to continental scale ecological research and facilitate collaboration between various groups, which in turn can support science based policy and NRM decision making across State and Commonwealth governments. </span><br />
<span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">The project itself has adopted an Agile development approach, whereby development and delivery of the S2S product is undertaken in a number of cycles, known as ‘sprints’. At the end of each sprint, new functionality developed in S2S are demonstrated to stakeholders and feedback sought to be considered for inclusion in the S2S ‘Product Backlog’ and subsequent future iterations of work. This approach enables issues and additional requirements to be incorporated right throughout the development phase of the project rather than at the end, which typically has severe negative impacts on the three core measures of project success - time, quality and costs. </span><br />
<span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">In order to independently measure the success of the project and the S2S product, we will design and conduct a customer survey at the end of the project. This survey will be constructed around the following questions which will enable the project team - ALA, TERN AEKOS and ANDS to judge the value of the product:</span><br />
<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">Can I easily find the data I need for my research?</span></li>
<li><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">Do the data visualization tools developed make the data discoverable?</span></li>
<li><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">Can I reuse these data in offline tools once they have been found in S2S?</span></li>
<li><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">Are the environmental layers useful for my research?</span></li>
<li><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">When reviewed against other data discovery portals, is the product generally of high quality in terms of usability and performance?</span></li>
<li><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">How does Soils to Satellites compare to other similar tools you have used in the past?</span></li>
<li><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">On a scale of 1-5 can you estimate the overall value that the system provides in supporting your research activities?</span></li>
<li><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">Please identify the areas of the system functionality that provides you the most value.</span></li>
<li><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">Has the system been of value in addressing the following research topics: </span></li>
<ul>
<li><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">Climate change prediction of species distribution (Conservation)</span></li>
<li><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">Identifying Biodiversity Hotspots (Conservation / Agriculture)</span></li>
<li><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">Understanding Soil and Vegetation Communities (Agriculture)</span></li>
<li><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">Understanding the Conditions of Ecosystems (Conservation)</span></li>
</ul>
</ul>
<br />
<span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">Ideally, this survey will merely be a formality, as the project is structured in such a way that stakeholders are continuously ask questions about what improvements are required with the actual S2S product in front of them.</span><br />
<br />
<ul style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><b id="internal-source-marker_0.7799502771813422" style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">
</span></b></ul>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4049135064570588583.post-91085627425706641862012-10-19T11:03:00.000+10:302013-03-28T08:49:59.335+10:30Post 3. HOW THE PRODUCT WILL MEET OUR USERS NEEDS<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
</div>
<h3>
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="color: #000077; font-size: large; white-space: pre-wrap;">TARGET CUSTOMERS</span></span></h3>
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">The target customers/users of the application are predominantly researchers who are working to answer questions that relate to the topics of; </span></span><br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial;">Climate change prediction of species distribution (Conservation)</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial;">Identifying Biodiversity Hotspots (Conservation / Agriculture)</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial;">Understanding Soil and Vegetation Communities (Agriculture)</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial;">Understanding the Conditions of Ecosystems (Conservation)</span></li>
</ul>
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">Other users of the application will include decision and policy makers from groups and organisations involved in Natural Research Management (NRM), such as State and Local Government Authorities (LGAs).</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">
</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">Soils2Satellites will support the investigation into the future management implications of temperature change, rainfall and drying for critical issues such as species genetic flow, refugia and evolutionary/extinction potential.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">
</span></span>
<br />
<h3>
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="color: #000077; font-size: large; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>HOW THE PRODUCT WILL MEET OUR USERS NEEDS</b></span></span></h3>
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">The project will meet users needs through providing a publicly accessible web portal that provides users with the ability to select <a href="http://www.ala.org.au/">ALA</a>-based species occurrence data and environmental layers, <a href="http://www.auscover.org.au/">Auscover</a> Satellite imagery and TREND plots data for exploration, display, comparison, link-to and/or download. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">
</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">The tool will support the exploration and visualisation of available relationships within the TREND and <a href="http://www.ala.org.au/">ALA</a> data, including those relating to: species occurrence and environment; genetic diversity; spatial distribution and genetic variation at genes under selection and environmental variation; changes in environment in the past inferred from the distribution of genetic variation (e.g. refugia or genetic expansions).</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">
</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">The tools in the application will allow for data relationships to be explored in new ways, thus opening up ways to interpret existing information and/or exposing relationships between data that were not previously possible.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">
</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">The Soils-to-Satellites tool will enable researchers to explore and display relationships between disconnected data sets in ways not previously experienced. For example, they will be able to display ’layers’ of Australian environmental data such as elevation, temperature or soil type, and then ‘ drill down’ to s to compare vegetation and genomics data across those layers (Diagram). Datasets identified through the tool will be provided to the ANDS <a href="http://ands.org.au/ardc.html">ARDC</a> at a collection level for further discovery by the research community.</span></span><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img height="400" src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/xkPVYeZv4MjkXB_18hZwjICuE3vET6A5YtBHEt-jGOIBWlWMKEZdUgEEo-kMfB3-K3k_dbwtPkgXOmz83I11dK7hYEpQ0aFpCgV58G3YQbKCxvE2bVo" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="370" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b id="internal-source-marker_0.08231511851772666" style="font-size: medium; font-weight: normal; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Diagram 1. A stylised diagram showing how information for three plots within a TREND transect (dark blue) can be displayed and analysed in detail by overlaying the spatial information of four layers at exactly the same location in each layer to view the genomic data collected at the ‘plot’ level and stored in the ÆKOS data portal (Source of IBRA, elevation and % clay -</span><a href="http://www.ala.org.au/"><span style="color: black; font-family: Arial; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Atlas of Living Australia</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, TREND plot layer derived with Google Earth, genomic samples are illustrations only ). Soils-to-Satellites enables researchers to visualise sophisticated ecological and genomics data through an integrated application for the first time</span><span style="font-family: Arial; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></span></b></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<b id="internal-source-marker_0.08231511851772666" style="clear: left; float: left; font-weight: normal; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></b></div>
<br />
<b id="internal-source-marker_0.08231511851772666" style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The application will also deliver RIF-CS service and data collections to <a href="http://ands.org.au/ardc.html" target="_blank">ANDS</a> to support further discoverability of the data.</span></b>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4049135064570588583.post-63059358042233893472012-10-18T17:21:00.000+10:302014-02-10T13:59:14.396+10:30Post 2. PRODUCT TEAM<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Soils to Satellites is a collaboration between the Atlas of Living Australia and the TERN Eco-Informatics team from the University of Adelaide. The collaboration would not have been possible without the support and funding from ANDS. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span>
<br />
<h3>
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="color: #000077; font-size: large; white-space: pre-wrap;">The team from the Atlas of Living Australia</span></span></h3>
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span>
<br />
<h4>
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Peter Doherty - Project Manager</span></span></h4>
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Peter has been the Program Manager for the Atlas since 2009 and, after having started out as a programmer before moving on to infrastructure systems, has an extensive career in the delivery and management of IT projects.</span></span><br />
<br />
<h4>
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Dave Martin - Software Architect</span></span></h4>
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Dave has been working in biodiversity informatics for 6 years, and prior to this has worked on healthcare and banking systems. He started working for the Atlas in 2008. Prior to this, he worked for the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) in Copenhagen. He has skills in GIS, databases (relational, nosql), Lucene, Java, Scala, Groovy/Grails.</span></span><br />
<br />
<h4>
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Dave Baird - Software Developer</span></span></h4>
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Dave is an experienced analyst/programmer and has been a software engineer for 18 years. Dave has been able to quickly pull together a demonstration environment using services from <a href="http://support.rc.nectar.org.au/docs/overview.html">NECTAR</a> and is using <a href="http://www.ala.org.au/about-the-atlas/downloadable-tools/web-services/">web services from the Atlas</a> and as supplied by the TERN team to create the base S2S portal. Dave was a key developer in the <a href="http://code.google.com/p/biolink/wiki/BioLink">Biolink</a> project and has strengths in:</span></span><br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Java/Scala </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;">RDBMS - MySQL, Postgres, Oracle, Ingres and SQLServer </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;">no SQL - Cassandra</span></li>
</ul>
<h4>
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;">
</span>
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Natasha Carter - Software Developer</span></h4>
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Natasha has been working as a software engineer for 8 years. She works for a small company that specialises in providing data integration solutions. She is experienced in the design and implementation of solutions using a variety of tools and technologies including:</span></span><br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Java/Scala </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;">RDBMS - MySQL, Postgres, Oracle, Ingres and SQLServer </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;">no SQL - Cassandra </span></li>
</ul>
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Natasha has been involved in the ALA since December 2009 contributing to the data and service layers.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<br />
<h4>
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Nick dos Remedios - Software Developer</span></span></h4>
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Nick has been with the Atlas of Living Australia since 2008 and has been working as a software developer since 1999. Prior to that he worked as immunologist/molecular biologist/bioinformatician. He has experience in the areas of airline logistics, patent informatics and biodiversity informatics. He often gets pigeon-holed as front-end developer and spends most of his time coding in Java, Groovy, Javascript and HTML/CSS. Favourite frameworks/APIs include Grails, Spring MVC and jQuery.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span>
<br />
<h4>
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Miles Nicholls - Data Manager</span></span></h4>
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;">With a background as a business analyst in data warehousing and business intelligence Miles has been working with the Atlas since late 2009 as Data Manager. Miles has qualifications in science (although never used in anger and frighteningly out of date) and information systems and thinks it's great that the ALA combines the two. Miles' work with the ALA involves discussing data sharing, open access licensing, data schemas and formats with the owners of data and transforming data using whatever tool will do the best job at the time.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span>
<br />
<h3>
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="color: #000077; font-size: large; white-space: pre-wrap;">The team from TERN Eco-Informatics</span></span></h3>
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span>
<br />
<h4>
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Martin Pullan - Project Manager</span></span></h4>
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Martin has been working in IT for over 15 years and has been the IT Project Manager with TERN Eco-informatics for 18 months with responsibility for the AEKOS, SHaRED and S2S projects. Prior to this role he worked as an IT Project Manager in the South Australian government developing software applications that supported environmental monitoring and NRM activities.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></span><br />
<h4>
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Casper Yeow - Business Analyst</span></span></h4>
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Casper has had over 13 years consulting in the Information Management industry, with experience in numerous business domains, primarily as a Business Analyst. He specialises in the areas of requirements gathering and analysis, business rules elicitation and process improvement.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span>
<br />
<h4>
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Ben Till - Senior Software Developer</span></span></h4>
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Ben is an enterprise software developer with 12 years experience. He has worked on projects all around Australia in domains including geospatial, emergency services, finance, real estate, correctional services and mobile applications. Ben has specialised skills in complex data processing.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span>
<h4>
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Gilli Atkinson</span></span></h4>
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Gilli is a Java Architect and software developer with over a decade of experience working in a range of government and private enterprise environments. He has worked on complex projects across Australia as a contract developer.</span></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4049135064570588583.post-89095311192451298622012-10-18T17:07:00.000+10:302013-03-28T08:50:43.100+10:30Post 1. PROJECT DESCRIPTION<b id="internal-source-marker_0.14602110930718482" style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A major component in ecological research is the discovery, visualisation and interpretation of the relationships between complex biological systems and their distribution in space and environment.</span></b><br />
<b id="internal-source-marker_0.14602110930718482" style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /></span></b>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This project will explore the potential for visualising and analysing ecological and related data from multiple plots and/or locations provided by the TREND SA project and spatial data from the ALA - leading to the ability to make comparisons between these data.</span></b><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></b><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“This one-year project unifies and combines spatial, multi-spectral remote sensing, ecological and genomics data in a single tool to meet the interdisciplinary data needs of scientists studying and managing Australian terrestrial ecosystems. Soils-to-Satellites will enable data users to analyse and display different types of research data more effectively,” says Craig Walker, Director of the</span><a href="http://www.aekos.org.au/"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Eco-informatics Facility</span></a><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> of the Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network (</span><a href="http://tern.org.au/"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">TERN</span></a><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">) at</span><a href="http://www.adelaide.edu.au/"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> The University of Adelaide</span></a><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></b><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">For the first time, the project combines exemplar vegetation and genomics data produced by the</span><a href="http://www.trendsa.org.au/"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> TREND</span></a><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> component of TERN’s Multi-Scale Plot Network (</span><a href="http://tern.org.au/Multi-Scale-Plot-Network-pg17730.html"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">MSPN</span></a><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">) facility with the rich spatial and biodiversity information from the</span><a href="http://www.ala.org.au/"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Atlas of Living Australia</span></a><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (ALA). These TREND data will be supported by and provided from the TERN Eco-informatics</span><a href="http://www.aekos.org.au/"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> ÆKOS</span></a><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> data repository.</span></b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></b><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Soils to Satellites tool will re-use and extend the existing infrastructure and functionality provided by the ALA’s open infrastructure and TERN Eco-informatics AEKOS platform.</span></b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></b><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Peter Doherty, Programme Manager of the</span><a href="http://www.ala.org.au/"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Atlas of Living Australia</span></a><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, says “Thanks to support from ANDS and DIISRTE, this project is a great example of adding value to Australia’s investment in e-research assets. We are pleased to be collaborating with the leading national research capabilities of the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (</span><a href="http://ncris.innovation.gov.au/Pages/default.aspx"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">NCRIS</span></a><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">) for terrestrial ecosystems to build the Soils-to-Satellites tool. Both teams are looking forward to combining our collective data infrastructure expertise and make ecosystem science even more productive and effective.”</span></b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></b><b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This project is supported by the Australian National Data Service and the Atlas of Living Australia. Both capabilities are supported by the Australian Government through the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy Program and the Education Investment Fund (EIF) Super Science Initiative.</span></b></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1