Byounghyun Yoo and Judson Harward, GSDI (Global Spatial Data Infrastructure Association) 12 World Conference, Singapore, October 19-22, 2010. 

Abstract: We introduce a web-service and its subsystems for scientific data exchange that is geographically referenced. This system has been designed for interdisciplinary research groups who conduct various scientific observations and generate their own scientific data in different environmental engineering area. These data include raw data from physical sensing and processed data from simulation, assimilation, and data processing. A cyber-infrastructure provides functionality for researchers to extend the longevity of their data, to facilitate data discovery, and to provide data access for authorized users. The cyber-infrastructure is intended to utilize a federated data repository model in which individual research projects will provide their own data storage either on standard file servers or in relational database management systems. This paper introduces central cyber-infrastructure and focuses on functionality and mechanism of federated data repository model. We implemented a data repository utilizing initial sensor data from an urban meteorology project of residential area in Singapore for validation of our system architecture. In order to provide mechanisms for data discovery by other researchers as well as data access for authorized users, produced data is managed with spatial-relational database management system. The data is geographically referenced for efficient discovery in geospatial context. Domain knowledge and metadata is captured from data producer and used for design of backend database system. The data Repository has two major components. For the data provider, there is a web service interface for data submission and publication, and for data discovery and sharing through the central cyber-infrastructure, there is a separate web service interface that communicates with the distributed data broker of the central cyber-infrastructure. The data provider uses a server-side application that provides a web-based user interface to enable uploading, parsing and storing of data in the data repository. Metadata of each data generated from the data provider takes important roles in this system for providing data alignment and communication with the central cyber-infrastructure. A web-based query interface supports data exports in a variety of common file formats such as Excel, Word, XML, CSV, and PDF. Other available tools enable interactive web-based visualizations and geospatial representations of datasets. This allows query output to be immediately displayed in geo-web environment. This data repository model will grow into a general data exchange facility with the central cyber-infrastructure for environmental sensing and modeling research.

Keywords: cyber-infrastructure, environmental data, data exchange, metadata, sensor data, Web service.

Conference website: http://www.gsdi.org/gsdiconf/gsdi12