matt jones software-interoperability

Matthew B. Jones

National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS)University of California Santa Barbara

Advancing Software for Ecological ForecastingMarch 25, 2014

Software for Ecological Synthesis

Ocean Health Index (OHI)O

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The “long-tail” of science

Heidorn, P. 2008. doi:10.1353/lib.0.0036

https://goa.nceas.ucsb.edu

https://knb.ecoinformatics.org/

Data HeterogeneityHeterogeneity HighLow

•Tight coupling•Simple subsetting•Explicit semantics

•Loose coupling•Hard subsetting•Limited semantics

Data set size LowHigh

Diverse Analysis and Modeling

• Wide variety of analyses used in ecology and environmental sciences

– Statistical analyses and trends– Rule-based models– Dynamic models (e.g., continuous time)– Individual-based models (agent-based)– many others

• Implemented in many frameworks– R, Matlab, SAS, SPSS, Jump, C, Python, Fortran

Kepler

DMP-Tool

Software & Data Interoperability

Plan

Collect

Assure

Describe

Preserve

Discover

Integrate

Analyze

•Produce an open-source scientific workflow system• Design, share, and execute scientific workflows

•Support scientists in a variety of disciplines• e.g., biology, ecology, oceanography, astronomy

•Features• Data access• Cross analytical packages• Documentation• Provenance tracking• Model archiving and sharing

Scientific workflows promote interoperability

Why workflows?

• Executability• Replicability• Reproducibility• Transparency• Modularity• Reusability• Provenance

How do we harness the long tail?

• Efficient data federation

• Interoperable software workflows

• Central search for discovery

• Just-in-time data integration– Loose coupling– Schema-less storage