Session II:Recurring Themes in Polar Sciences

From VOiG

1 Introduction
- 1.1 Abstract
2 Time and Location
3 Presenters
4 Forum
5 Presentation Materials

[edit] Introduction

The Virtual Observatory in Action: Recurring Themes in Polar Science Use Cases

[edit] Abstract

Investigators at the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) are participating in several projects which incorporate virtual observatory concepts. Informal use cases have been developed to describe the data discovery and access elements for each project, and are being used to drive the subsequent requirements definition and development phases. Although distinct user groups representing different disciplines contributed to the use case contents, several themes and concepts regarding the browsing, searching, data exploration and data access process consistently emerge upon reviewing the user input as a whole. These elements, clearly of importance across user groups, merit particular attention when designing a virtual observatory interface.

This presentation will discuss the methods used to develop our data discovery and access use cases for projects supporting polar science research, the user communities represented in those use cases, and the commonalities observed. Consistent themes emerging to date include:

The ability to easily control the boundaries of scientific parameter dimensions (space, time, height/depth) when searching for and when obtaining data.
Search results should be relevant, ranked, and intuitively useful. Many users now expect (or at least hope for) a "Google-style" search as part of their data discovery process.
Search/browse results should also be hierarchical and filterable. Users desire the ability to customize the presentation of search results and to "search within" results.
Access to data quality indicators and references, including access to human experts in the use of the selected data.
Retrieval of data in a format specific to the researcher's needs.

An awareness of user priorities is important to the success of Virtual Observatory development, especially with regard to the metadata infrastructure required to support the desired user interfaces. This applies to well-described data in widely used formats, but even more so to data currently unavailable to the Virtual Observatory user community such as those in non-digital or custom ASCII formats.