R.S. Weigel Department of Computational and Data Sciences

1. The Virtual Radiation Belt Observatory (ViRBO) and tools for radiation belt sciencehttp://virbo.org/ R.S. Weigel Department of Computational and Data Sciences George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia

2. Contributors Software * Eric Kihn (NOAA/NGDC, ViRBO Web and API) * Mikhail Zhizhin (RFO, ViRBO Web and API) * Dmitry Mishin (RFO, ViRBO Web and API) * Dmitry Kokovin (RFO, ViRBO Web and API) * Jeremy Faden (Cottage Systems, Autoplot) Data * Dan Baker (CU/LASP, Data and metadata) * Sebastian Boudier (Onera, Data calibration) * Janet Green (NOAA/SEC, Data and metadata) * Shri Kanekal (CU/LASP, Data and metadata) * Reiner Friedel (LANL, Data and calibration) * Paul O'Brien (Aerospace, Data and metadata)

3. The Heliophysics Data Environment

4. Outline • What is a VxO? • Goal of VO effort • Where to start • Relevance of VO effort to Scientist • Steps to create VO environment • Needed services • ViRBO

5. What is a VxO • Virtual Observatory where x represents a domain such as thermosphere/ionosphere or radiation belt • For a given community, a VxO provides • A comprehensive list of available data • Community-specific services on data • Connections to other VxOs with relevant services

6. Goal of VO effort • “VOs should make ‘standard’ scientific research much more efficient.”  [Roberts et al., 2005] • Rate of science output must keep up with rate of potential science output given amount of available data • The framework which is used must allow for this • Requires improvements in: search interfaces analysis visualization access communication • … all parts of the chain from instrument or model output to end user must continuously improve.

7. History • In (funded) development for about 3 years • A fundamental change in the data approach • Virtual Observatories for Radiation Belt, Thermosphere/Ionosphere, Magnetosphere, Solar, and Heliosphere. • Newer services include an event list manager, waves, and an energetic particles.

8. Where to start • Look at http://vspo.gsfc.nasa.gov/ • Key function: High-level pointers to known data sets. • If you know of a data set that you can’t find a reference to there, let them know. • For more detailed information and services, VSPO will return pointers to relevant Virtual Observatory.

9. Relevance to Scientist • Many of us have become data managers and solve similar problems do not depend on science specialty. • We build ad-hoc solutions • If you have a problem, ask if it is cross-domain. • If it is, there is probably another person or VO working on a similar problem. There is usually potential for leveraging effort. • Example: Event list • Example: Web browser visualization • Identify and develop cross-cutting services. They eventually become “core” services.

10. Steps to create VO environment • Describe the data in a standard format (SPASE; http://spase-group.org/). Primary VxO activity in past 3 years. If you know of a data product that does not have associated metadata, tell a VO. • Create services • Connect services

11. Steps to create VO environment • Describe the data in a standard format (SPASE; http://spase-group.org/). Primary VxO activity in past 3 years. If you know of a data product that does not have associated metadata, tell a VO. • Create services • Connect services

12. Key Concept • Everything should be viewed as a service

13. Example Services • CCMC – Community Coordinated Modeling Center • VMR – Will add services to CCMC data • SSCWeb – Orbit calculations • ViRBO - L* calculations (using SSCWeb data)

14. Metadata Creators Standard Query Edit Management Data Creators Ingestion service (with versioning!) Data Base API General Mass store and backup Fast Cache (Content delivery service) Filter service Visualization Pre-computed Static and on demand Interactive and dynamic Needed Services, Tools, and Roles

15. ViRBO [http://virbo.org/] • Breaking the VO paradigm in many ways (not just connecting services and creating metadata) • Improved high-level tools and services are fine, but first • Increase data accessibility • Increase amount of available data • We have: • Created many climatological data sets • Simplified access to many existing data sets. • Creating a time series server • See virbo.org for more …

16. Data [http://virbo.org/]

17. Future and existing services • L and L* data base • L-sort plots • Fly-through AP-8/AE-8 and AP-9/AE-9 • Hosting SVN for AP-9/AE-9 development • Hosting meeting notes and documents • Work with RBSP to develop or connect services • Many more …

18. ViRBO Current Projects • VxOware • Autoplot • Time Series Server

19. A tool for metadata management VxOwareNotes: http://vxoware.orgImplementation: http://virbo.org/meta

20. VxOware • For all aspects of managing XML-based scientific metadata • User accounts with different privileges • Edit/submit metadata via browser and with command line tools • Queries of many types • Federations • Comment, Link, and Tag metadata • Revision history • Transforms on query output

21. Autoplot[http://autoplot.org] • A browser for data on the web