The Virtual Solar Terrestrial Observatory (VSTO)

The software architecture behind the functionality offered by the first release of the VSTO portal. The user interface allows selection of data by starting with an instrument, a time range, or a scientific parameter, and ultimately connects to the external MLSO or CEDAR data services. The semantic framework provided by the VSTO ontology enables a unified user experience across separate physics domain and data archives. View large image.

The Virtual Solar Terrestrial Observatory (VSTO) is an NSF-funded collaboration of the NCAR High Altitude Observatory (HAO) and Computing and Information Systems Laboratory (CISL) with McGuinness & Associates. The goal of the project is to research and develop a knowledge system environment that would allow seamless integration and data access in the areas of Solar, Solar-Terrestrial, and Space Physics (SSTSP). By providing a higher-level semantic layer on top of the current array of disparate data formats, services and repositories, the project is expected to greatly facilitate and empower the work of data providers, scientists, researchers, and educators across all these domains. At the end of its three years of funding, VSTO is expected to deliver a fully functional prototype allowing virtual access to selected services comprising observational and model data, different data formats, and multiple data archives.

Because of its innovative and integrative approach, VSTO plays a strategic role within the NCAR and CISL cyberinfrastructure priorities. The same technologies, design patterns, and interfaces that are being developed for VSTO could likely be applied to other scientific disciplines such as climate, weather and forecast, and further on to the biogeosciences, geochemistry, water and carbon cycles, and so on, thus allowing NCAR to play a pioneering and leading role in the geo-informatics arena. Not by coincidence, the same researchers and engineers working at VSTO are also engaged in other strategic efforts like the Earth System Grid, the Community Data Portal, and TIGGE (Thorpex Interactive Grand Global Ensemble), thus fostering quick technology transfer and cross-pollination among all these efforts.

In FY 2006, the VSTO team accomplished substantial progress toward the realization of its ambitious goals. By engaging the wider community, and collaborating with other parallel efforts like the NASA SWEET (Semantic Web for Earth and Environmental Terminology), the VSTO ontology (an organized model of the concepts and relationships relevant in the SSTSP domains) has been brought to a stable form. Based on this ontological model, a software framework has been developed that achieves complete semantic integration between two very different domains and data archives: the Mauna Loa Solar Observatory (MLSO) in the solar domain, and the CEDAR database in the Upper Atmosphere domain. A unified user interface allows the user to select one of three alternative workflows to search, select and download data and products from either domain, ultimately tying into the specific data services that are exposed by each archive. The newly released VSTO portal encompasses functionality previously supported by the separate MLSO and CEDAR web sites, and represents one of the first successful examples of comprehensive semantic integration in the field.

In FY 2007, the last year of the project under the current funding stream, the VSTO team plans to build on the solid progress of FY 2006 in several respects. The VSTO portal and services will be supported in an operational mode, serving the combined MLSO and CEDAR communities and expanding to the needs of other communities as well. Additional functionality will be developed and deployed to enable unprecedented ways to search and compare data that are possible only because of the over-arching semantic framework. New rich clients (based on Web Services) will be developed to expand access to the VSTO knowledge environment beyond the traditional browser-based capabilities. Finally, the VSTO team will continue its engagement with the large geoinformatics, semantic, and scientific communities to foster additional collaborative relationships and opportunities for further leveraging this pioneering work.

The VSTO project supports the NCAR strategic priority of "Creating an Earth system knowledge environment." It is funded by NSF Science and Engineering Information Integration and Informatics (SEIII) Grant 0431153.