European grid of solar observations

European Commission Directorate-General For The Information Society And Media

Description

EGSO
Information technology and telecommunications
Target audience: Specialised/Technical

Sujets

• Information technology
• Information society (disambiguation)
• Computer software
• Solar energy
• Environmental monitoring
• Informatique
• Marketing et communication

Informations

• Publié par: EUROPEAN-COMMISSION-DIRECTORATE-GENERAL-FOR-THE-INFORMATION-SOCIETY-AND-MEDIA
• Nombre de lectures: 4
• Langue: English

Extrait

Framework Programme 5Grid projects - Achievements

European Grid of Solar Observations

EGSO

am505428Sheet Egso.indd1 _

Scope Modern observational science increasingly needs to be able to combine data from as many different sources as possible. One of the major problems in handling the data is identifying what data exists that could be useful to address particular scientic problems  this is exacerbated by the heterogeneous nature of the data and the rapidly growing volumes of data that new instrumentation is producing.This is a generic problem, common to many communities undertaking observational science, but EGSO has been addressing the problem in order to create the fabric of a virtual observatory for the solar physics community. Europe has considerable expertise in theeld of solar physics  it operates many different types of ground-based solar observatories, and has been involve in most space-based solar observatories since the 1960s. A major hurdle in exploiting data obtained through these observatories has been identifying and then retrieving observations that match search criteria aimed at solving particular scientic problems. EGSO has created new metadata techniques to greatly simplify this.

Innovation and functionality EGSO has been implemented as three roles  consumer, broker and provider  interconnected by an underlying communications layer. The roles manage different parts of the overall system.The provider role has a number of adapter modules that handle the different access protocols supported by data archives.The objective is to provide seamless access to the scattered heterogeneous dataset and to minimise the burden on data providers to encourage participation.The providers are not required to conform to a single standard for storing or handling the data. Special providers that curate necessary metadata have been implemented as stand-alone web services  this allows them to be managed independently and they are also available to other virtual observatories that need these data. One of the problems that EGSO faced when it started was the absence of Community-wide standards for the metadata needed to drive a virtual observatory. EGSO developed a data model that drew on the work of the SOHO (Solar and Heliospheric Observatory) team, but was extended to incorporate the needs of all solar observations and to allow the inclusion of heliospheric observations.

Positioning The EGSO project has focused on the use of grid technologies to enable the creation of a virtual observatory for the solar physics community. It is designed to provide seamless access to heterogeneous data that are scattered around the world.Where necessary, the necessary metadata and search tools have been developed.This has been done in a generic way so that the techniques can be applied to similar grids of data in other disciplines.

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 EGSO

Contract number IST-2001-32409 Type of project Cost-shared Research and Technological Development Action Project coordinator University College London Contact person Robert Bentley Mullard Space Science Laboratory University College London Holmbury St. Mary Dorking, Surrey RH5 6NT United Kingdom [e-mail] Project website http://www.egso-org

Maximum Community contribution to project EUR 2 400 000

Project start date 1 March 2002

Duration 36 months

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