All,
More great inputs. Thanks all. Most of the concerns that were raised
at the GO-ESSP meeting last week have now been expressed with good
clarity in this discussion. Since this is a GALEON email list I
suspect, that the GO-ESSP participants like myself generally only tune
in with half an ear. (Thanks for permitting us to "butt in".) So there
is a level of context about GALEON, itself, that may be missing to us.
Namely, can someone provide a clear statement of the goals (mission) of
the GALEON project? Is there any sense among GALEON participants that
the goals should be modified in view of the WCS1.2 "core plus
extensions" model?
I ask this in part after reflecting at length why the analogy of "the
JPEG2000 community" felt amiss to me. JPEG200 is an IT standard that is
emerging from the IT standards committee process. The metric of success
for JPEG2000 is that it performs useful work for any community that can
benefit from it. Marrying JPEG2000 to WCS is a potential win for both
standards, where we view the goal as promoting specific technologies
because they serve users generally.
The problems raised at the GO-ESSP meeting, by contrast, reflect the
needs of a specific end user community (the scientists we serve) -- not
a technology development community like ourselves. A specific and
pressing example is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC), which is advancing an ambitious intercomparison of distributed
climate model results (CMIP5). These model outputs will be
characterized by huge size and nasty coordinate systems ("tripolar"
oceans and "cube-sphere" atmospheres). It is incumbent upon the IT
support community to make this ambitious effort successful (and many
other efforts like it). And it is also incumbent upon us to help other
less specialized communities (e.g. "climate impacts") participate in the
broader interpretation of the model results.
Does it fit into the GALEON mission statement to ask how GALEON can help
in this effort? The climate community already has highly advanced
(though admittedly incomplete) solutions for distributed model
intercomparison using netCDF-CF-OPeNDAP. Where we have critical gaps to
be filled is 1) making these model outputs available to outside
communities (often GIS application users); and 2) bridging with European
partners for whom an OGC-acceptable solution is a legally-mandated
requirement. Can GALEON help us to succeed in these goals?
- Steve
=============================================
Peter Baumann wrote:
Hi Galeon activists,
I'm following this discussion with great interest and curiosity.
While trying to learn more about metocean world I have started
collecting use cases mentioned.
For those of you who have access to the WCS.SWG Wiki, the URL is
https://portal.opengeospatial.org/twiki/bin/view/WCSrwg/GaleonNetwork
Said page also collects some of the URLs the occasionally are posted here.
I plan to sort of maintain and extend it, but any direct editing is
most welcome too.
-Peter
