GIS e-Science: developing a roadmap

1. GIS e-Science: developing a roadmap Paul S. Ell Centre for Data Digitisation & Analysis Queen’s Belfast

2. Definition of e-Science “What is meant by e-Science? In the future, e-Science will refer to the large scale science that will increasingly be carried out through distributed global collaborations enabled by the Internet. Typically, a feature of such collaborative scientific enterprises is that they will require access to very large data collections, very large scale computing resources and high performance visualisation back to the individual user scientists. The Grid is an architecture proposed to bring all these issues together and make a reality of such a vision for e-Science. Ian Foster and Carl Kesselman, inventors of the Globus approach to the Grid define the Grid as an enabler for Virtual Organisations: ‘An infrastructure that enables flexible, secure, coordinated resource sharing among dynamic collections of individuals, institutions and resources.' It is important to recognize that resource in this context includes computational systems and data storage and specialized experimental facilities.” RCUK e-Science Homepage

3. But how does this relate to the humanities? • AHRC e-Science website probably has the best definition: “Digital resources in the A&H have grown at an astonishing rate in the last ten or twenty years. Out of over £100m spent by the AHRC since 1999 on research project awards, half has been given to projects with some kind of digital output. The problem is that researchers do not yet have the technology to make the fullest use of these resources, because they are generally not connected together. e-Science provides a set of solutions for this problem, and for the related development of facilities for research collaboration using the Internet. e-Science thus stands for a specific set of advanced technologies for Internet resource-sharing and collaboration: so-called grid technologies, and technologies integrated with them, for instance for authentication, data-mining and visualization. This has allowed more powerful and innovative research designs in many areas of scientific research, and is capable of transforming the A&H as well.”

4. Grid technologies The AHRC have got it right with the ‘data-focussed’ emphasis on e-Science. “Grid technologies fall into three main strands, with different degrees of significance for the A&H:” The three aspects of e-Science are likely to have varying impacts in the humanities and arts • Access Gird: Is this really distance learning with a better internet connection? Are humanities scholars going to change the fundamental way they do research? • Computation Grid: Do humanities and arts scholars need high-powered computing power? • Data Grid: The key technology that will fundamentally change scholarship in the humanities and arts. Also the key challenges

5. Unique challenges in the humanities and arts: The Data Grid • In the humanities the data grid is less concerned with moving large amounts of data around… • Heterogeneous, fragmented, partial, disparate e-resources • Information overload • Resource discovery problems • Interface and data harvesting problems • Integratory difficulties • Data in ever more complex multimedia formats

6. The ‘GIS’ e-Science ‘solution • All(?) humanities and arts e-resources have spatial, chronological and subject components which can assist with information management • GIS technology provides a geo-temporal framework in which to manage, visualise and interrogate these resources. • GIS technology can deal with multimedia material as the methodology abandons its quantitative polygon-based origins.

7. The proof: early exemplars The Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative • UC Berkeley-based project with almost 1,000 humanities and arts academic affiliates from around the world holding spatially referenced e-resources • Metadata that allows registered distributed datasets to be retrieved on the fly at object level • Software – TimeMap – which allows retrieved data to be selected and visualised and exported

10. The proof: early exemplars The Vision of Britain through time • Based on a ‘traditional’ HGIS of quantitative data and polygons • Supplemented with additional e-resources – historical gazetteers describing places in time, travellers tales, historical maps • Materials organised by place, time and subject

14. Other examples

17. History of the book Source: MacDonald B and Black F (2000) “Using GIS for spatial and temporal analyses in print culture studies” Social Science History, 24, pp. 505-536

18. GIS e-Science developments • Examples ‘fixed’ to a degree • Need for e-infrastructure – place name gazetteers (JISC EPNS Project); chronological gazetteers (‘Going Places in the Catalog: Time Periods’ from US National Leadership Grant for Libraries); subject indexes (ECAI ‘Support for the Learner: What, Where, When, and Who’ – second NLGL grant) • Need for a geo-temporal data browser • Enhanced metadata or context sensitive intelligent searching

19. Aims of GIS e-Science workshop • To establish current activity in GIS e-Science • To examine barriers to development • To review the potential • To develop a roadmap and implementation programme

20. Conclusions • The Data Grid will be the key area of e-Science activity in the humanities and arts • Data Grid based e-Science in the humanities and arts is far more challenging than in the sciences • Key infrastructure is required together with enhanced search capabilities • Opportunity for fundamental change in humanities and arts research • Chance to fully exploit the vast array of e-resources already available

21. Integrating e-resources by place and chronology: GIS e-Science: statistics, maps, photographs, text, manuscripts, existing e-resources, websites, museum objects . . .