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CyberInfrastructure for CyberInfrastructure for Geography? Geography? Mark Gahegan Mark Gahegan GeoVISTA Center, Department of Geography The Pennsylvania State University, USA

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CyberInfrastructure for Geography?. Mark Gahegan GeoVISTA Center, Department of Geography The Pennsylvania State University, USA. Four example cyber-projects. The Geosciences Network (GEON): www.geongrid.org. Human Environment Regional Observatories (HERO): www.hero.psu.edu. - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

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Page 1: CyberInfrastructure for Geography?

CyberInfrastructure for Geography?CyberInfrastructure for Geography?

Mark GaheganMark Gahegan

GeoVISTA Center, Department of GeographyThe Pennsylvania State University, USA

Page 2: CyberInfrastructure for Geography?

GeoInformatics: Edinburgh, Ontology and other ways of knowing

Four example cyber-projectsFour example cyber-projects

The Geosciences Network (GEON): www.geongrid.org

Human Environment Regional Observatories (HERO): www.hero.psu.edu

Learning Activities in Digital Libraries: www.dialogplus.org

Archaeometry:

Page 3: CyberInfrastructure for Geography?

GeoInformatics: Edinburgh, Ontology and other ways of knowing

CyberInfrastructure for WHOM?CyberInfrastructure for WHOM?

• Geography community is very diverse:• For example, 2007 AAG meeting:

– 68 specialty meetings

– 60 concurrent sessions

– 4000+ talks

• …can a cyberinfrastructure span geography?• …how do we make it relevant to diverse a

community?

Page 4: CyberInfrastructure for Geography?

GeoInformatics: Edinburgh, Ontology and other ways of knowing

CyberInfrastructure for WHAT?CyberInfrastructure for WHAT?

• Distributed, high performance computing?• Discover, gain access to, distributed resources?• Shared tools and methods (analysis

environment)?• An archive / repository for data?• A distributed collaboratory?• Crisis / disaster planning, support, mitigation?• A set of educational services and activities?

Page 5: CyberInfrastructure for Geography?

GeoInformatics: Edinburgh, Ontology and other ways of knowing

CyberInfrastructure: The GEON GRIDCyberInfrastructure: The GEON GRID

Compute cluster

1TF cluster

Livermore

PoP node

Data Cluster Partner services

USGS

GeologicalSurvey ofCanada

ESRI

KGS

Partner Projects

Chronos

CUAHSI

Page 6: CyberInfrastructure for Geography?

GeoInformatics: Edinburgh, Ontology and other ways of knowing

Representing living knowledgeRepresenting living knowledge

• “Knowledge keeps no better than fish”-- Alfred North Whitehead

• “You cannot put your foot in the same stream twice”

-- Heraclitus

• “You can know the name of a bird in all the languages of the world, but when you're finished, you'll know absolutely nothing whatever about the bird... So let's look at the bird and see what it's doing -- that's what counts.”

-- Richard Feynman

Page 7: CyberInfrastructure for Geography?

GeoInformatics: Edinburgh, Ontology and other ways of knowing

Where does meaning come from?Where does meaning come from?

• Domain understanding / theory (ontology)• The way things are done (epistemology)

– How are resources created and used (work practices / situations)?

• Negotiation among the community of users (social network, group cognition)

• We ‘know’ things in many ways:– Theoretical, Experiential, Procedural

• i.e. the interplay of top-down and bottom-up knowledge played out in private and social situations

Page 8: CyberInfrastructure for Geography?

GeoInformatics: Edinburgh, Ontology and other ways of knowing

Knowledge Goals of Cyber-InfrastructureKnowledge Goals of Cyber-Infrastructure

• Help communities of researchers and educators to do better science by sharing their resources: computing power, data, tools, models, protocols, results

• BUT…Making resources available is not the same as making them useful to others– Can we also share meaning?

• Litmus tests: – Can we remember what we did?– Will future generations of scientists be able to follow our

work?

Page 9: CyberInfrastructure for Geography?

GeoInformatics: Edinburgh, Ontology and other ways of knowing

“Knowledge soup” – Sowa, 2002“Knowledge soup” – Sowa, 2002

Little round planet in a big universe,Sometimes it looks blessed, sometimes it looks cursed.It depends what you look at obviously…But even more, it depends on the way that you see.

(Bruce Cockburn: “Child of the Wind”, 1994)

Page 10: CyberInfrastructure for Geography?

GeoInformatics: Edinburgh, Ontology and other ways of knowing

What’s in the soup? A nexus of knowledge structures (Whitehead, 1923)

What’s in the soup? A nexus of knowledge structures (Whitehead, 1923)

Page 11: CyberInfrastructure for Geography?

GeoInformatics: Edinburgh, Ontology and other ways of knowing

Remembering situations of useRemembering situations of use

Page 12: CyberInfrastructure for Geography?

GeoInformatics: Edinburgh, Ontology and other ways of knowing

Creation Application Represented by

Who did it? Who should use it? Collections of people

Where was it made? Where does it apply? Collections of sites / scales

When was it made? When does it apply? Collections of temporal intervals

How was it made? How should it be used? Collections of methods and data

Why was it made? Why should it be used? Collections of research questions, motivations, theories

SituationsSituations

Page 13: CyberInfrastructure for Geography?

GeoInformatics: Edinburgh, Ontology and other ways of knowing

What’s in the soup? A nexus of knowledge structures (Whitehead, 1923)

What’s in the soup? A nexus of knowledge structures (Whitehead, 1923)

Page 14: CyberInfrastructure for Geography?

GeoInformatics: Edinburgh, Ontology and other ways of knowing

Situating e-resources in the knowledge nexus

Situating e-resources in the knowledge nexus

Page 15: CyberInfrastructure for Geography?

GeoInformatics: Edinburgh, Ontology and other ways of knowing

Page 16: CyberInfrastructure for Geography?

GeoInformatics: Edinburgh, Ontology and other ways of knowing

Page 17: CyberInfrastructure for Geography?

GeoInformatics: Edinburgh, Ontology and other ways of knowing

Perspectives as filtersPerspectives as filters

Perspectives filter an information space according to particular situations. Perspectives A and B preferentially select different types of resources and relations; the ability to view perspectives can show how someone else made sense of a given set of resources.

Page 18: CyberInfrastructure for Geography?

GeoInformatics: Edinburgh, Ontology and other ways of knowing

Four perspectives on a “seismic velocity” concept (red node). a) Intensional concept structure. b) A task that describes how seismic velocity can be measured. c) A social network built around users of the concept. d) Data resources that have been used to describe seismic velocity.

Page 19: CyberInfrastructure for Geography?

GeoInformatics: Edinburgh, Ontology and other ways of knowing

Concept use and evolutionConcept use and evolution

Evolution of “Depositional environment” concept through use by different researchers over time, progressing from upper left to lower right.

Page 20: CyberInfrastructure for Geography?

GeoInformatics: Edinburgh, Ontology and other ways of knowing

ConceptVista: What to represent?ConceptVista: What to represent?

• Basic types – Geon Themes: – Resources:– Methods:– Personnel:– Institutions:– Articles:– …

• Styling…

• Perspectives…

• Situations…

• Connections to web resources

Page 21: CyberInfrastructure for Geography?

GeoInformatics: Edinburgh, Ontology and other ways of knowing

Perspectives for GEONPerspectives for GEON

Page 22: CyberInfrastructure for Geography?

GeoInformatics: Edinburgh, Ontology and other ways of knowing

Page 23: CyberInfrastructure for Geography?

GeoInformatics: Edinburgh, Ontology and other ways of knowing

Page 24: CyberInfrastructure for Geography?

GeoInformatics: Edinburgh, Ontology and other ways of knowing

Page 25: CyberInfrastructure for Geography?

GeoInformatics: Edinburgh, Ontology and other ways of knowing

Navigating through conceptual universesNavigating through conceptual universes

Page 26: CyberInfrastructure for Geography?

GeoInformatics: Edinburgh, Ontology and other ways of knowing

Combining perspectives: e.g. GEON institutions, publications and personnelCombining perspectives: e.g. GEON institutions, publications and personnel

Page 27: CyberInfrastructure for Geography?

GeoInformatics: Edinburgh, Ontology and other ways of knowing

Navigation strategiesNavigation strategies

Styling independently serializable (OGCs SLD)

Expand/collapse remove or expand detail

Locality limit the depth of expansion

Perspectives visualized using SLD

Query linking to other resourcesUsing a variety of ‘nym’ options

Page 28: CyberInfrastructure for Geography?

GeoInformatics: Edinburgh, Ontology and other ways of knowing

SummarySummary

• Rich, Living Knowledge– “Knowledge keeps no better than fish”

-- Alfred North Whitehead

– “You cannot put your foot in the same stream twice”-- Heraclitus

– “…So let's look at the bird and see what it's doing -- that's what counts.” -- Richard Feynman

• Perspectives allow scientists to ‘describe what they know’ onto shared ontological resources.

• Irony of Ontology is that ontologically-based languages can be used to represent its obverse—Epistemology.