Webinars

An Earth and Space Knowledge Commons.

When: Wednesday September 29th, 1-2 pm ET
Who: Ryan McGranaghan, Principal Data Scientist & Aerospace Engineering Scientist, ASTRA Associates
View Recording HERE

Abstract: Our technological and physical expansion into space exemplifies the growing interconnections between Earth and the space environment. The inseparability of the space environment from Earth and life on it reveals cracks and inadequacies in our data and knowledge infrastructure to integrate the different domains. The key to a flourishing community of Earth and space research is in improved knowledge systems (ways of representing our information). We will highlight a few efforts toward improved knowledge representation systems, emphasizing the importance of thinking in graphs/networks, and spark a discussion toward a framework to address the asymmetries: a knowledge commons [McGranaghan et al., 2021].

McGranaghan, R., Klein, S. J., Cameron, A., Young, E., Schonfeld, S., Higginson, A., … Thompson, B. (2021). The need for a Space Data Knowledge Commons. Structuring Collective Knowledge. Retrieved from https://knowledgestructure.pubpub.org/pub/space-knowledge-commons

2021 ESIP Summer Meeting Highlights

When: Thursday August 12th, 1:00-2:30 PM ET
View Recording: HERE

The 2021 ESIP Summer Meeting Highlights Webinar will provide an overview of plenary and breakout sessions from the ESIP Meeting held online (July 19th-23rd, 2021). Whether you weren't able to attend the meeting in person or you're looking to see what happened in concurrent breakout sessions, this webinar is a great way for you to learn about what happened at the meeting and how to get involved in next steps.

Data System and Software Development Challenges in a NASA Research Program Turned Private Enterprise: Airborne Snow Observatories, Inc.

Speaker: Evan Burgess, Lead Data Scientist at Airborne Snow Observatories, Inc.
When: Wednesday June 23rd, 1:00-2:00 pm ET
View Recording: https://youtu.be/37R5eAyl4ks

Airborne Snow Observatories Inc., a start up born out of a NASA JPL research program, aims to provide inventories of mountain snow water resources worldwide with unprecedented precision. Evan Burgess, Lead Data Scientist at ASO, will discuss the data system and software development challenges in transitioning research-focused code and data into an operational system in the AWS cloud. Rapid data turnaround, the fast pace of innovation at ASO and complexities inherent in airborne remote sensing data have forced ASO to rethink its approach to processing and data distribution.

NOAA’s Precision Marine Navigation Program: Developing Next-Generation Data Services for the Maritime Community

When: Monday May 24th, 2:00 – 3:00 pm ET
View Recording: https://youtu.be/laC0Du6-x3k

From recreational boaters to container ship operators, all mariners rely on a wide array of navigation data while operating at sea. To enhance the mariner’s decision-making process, NOAA’s Precision Marine Navigation (PMN) program is developing innovative services and products that make NOAA's weather, oceanographic, and bathymetric data more accessible. By standardizing data formats and utilizing cloud technologies to process and disseminate NOAA’s data, the PMN tools allow for machine-to-machine readability with navigation equipment and software and provide new, more intuitive ways for mariners to visualize and discover the data. Through these next-generation services and products, NOAA is helping to achieve a safer and more efficient marine transportation system.
Speakers: Julia Powell, Chief, Navigation Services Division, NOAA Office of Coast Survey & John Kelley, Physical Scientist/Meteorologist, Coast Survey Development Laboratory, NOAA Office of Coast Survey

Investing in Industrial Innovation (InCubed): A Co-Funding Programme of the European Space Agency

When: Wednesday April 28th, 11:30 am – 1:00 pm ET
View Recording: HERE

This 90-minute webinar will feature InCubed (https://incubed.phi.esa.int), which stands for ‘Investing in Industrial Innovation’ and is a Public Private Partnership co-funding programme run by the European Space Agency (ESA) Φ-lab (https://philab.phi.esa.int). The mission of ESA’s Φ-lab is to accelerate the future of Earth Observation (EO) by means of transformational innovation, i.e. innovation which completely transforms or creates entire industries via new technologies, with the aim to strengthen the competitiveness of the EO industrial and research sectors. InCubed focuses on developing innovative and commercially viable products and services that leverage the value of Earth observation imagery and datasets. The programme has a very wide scope and can be used to co-fund anything from building satellites to ground applications and everything between or to develop new EO business models. Join the webinar to learn about the InCubed Programme and the ESA Φ-lab that the programme sits within. You will also hear from speakers from 4 activities at various stages of development supported by InCubed. Each of the speakers will touch on 1) how their activities are innovative, 2) what their biggest challenges in innovating have been, and 3) what further innovations are needed.

The Future of Earth Science and its Innovation Stakeholder Ecosystem

Speaker: Dr. Kuan Collins, Solution Architect Master, Civil Space, SAIC
View the Recording: https://youtu.be/bhtYmgsCO2s

This webinar will focus on opportunities and methodologies for rapid prototyping of emerging technologies in Earth Science. The Federal Government has a long history of strategically partnering with commercial companies, like SAIC, and academia to accelerate the adoption and utilization of transformational technologies. By using agile and DevSecOps methodologies, the commercial sector can provide sandbox environments designed to quickly build and test capabilities against customer use cases, delivering emergent technology in weeks instead of months and years. The Federal Government’s embracing of incremental, fluid, and dynamic “fail fast” method of technology development results in solutions that “close the loop” and ensures continuous, automated, sustainable and transformative integration of prototypes and pilot capabilities into operational government programs of record.

2021 ESIP Winter Meeting Highlights

When: Friday February 19th, 2:00-3:30 PM ET
View the Recording: HERE

The 2021 ESIP Winter Meeting Highlights Webinar will provide an overview of plenary and breakout sessions from the ESIP Winter Meeting held online (January 26th-29th, 2021). Whether you weren't able to attend the meeting in person or you're looking to see what happened in concurrent breakout sessions, this webinar is a great way for you to learn about what happened at the meeting and how to get involved in next steps.

ESIP 101

View the Recording: HERE

Learn something new about ESIP by attending ESIP 101. This session is geared toward both those who are new to ESIP and those who would like to learn more about the community and its activities. You can expect a fast-paced overview of ESIP and the many ways you can get involved, including what to expect at the upcoming 2021 ESIP Winter Meeting.

Rapid Scaling of Sensitive Information Sharing in Support of National Water Prediction & Hurricane Research

Who: Dave Jones (StormCenter Communications, Inc.)
Recording: HERE

Dave Jones, CEO of StormCenter Communications, will present on new efforts they are working on with NOAA for operational implementation of GeoCollaborate, which is StormCenter’s SBIR Phase III, innovative cross-platform real-time data sharing and collaboration environment. The NWS’ National Water Center (NWC) in Tuscaloosa, AL and NOAA’s Hurricane Research Division (HRD) are putting GeoCollaborate to work to improve data and information sharing across agencies, states and scientists to create a unified approach to situational awareness and decision making. This is critical, as so far in 2020 (as of 10/7), there have been 16 weather/climate disaster events with losses exceeding $1 billion each to affect the United States. These events included 1 drought event, 11 severe storm events, 3 tropical cyclone events, and 1 wildfire event. Overall, these events resulted in the deaths of 188 people and had significant economic effects on the areas impacted. The 1980–2019 annual average is 6.6 events (CPI-adjusted); the annual average for the most recent 5 years (2015–2019) is 13.8 events (CPI-adjusted). Globally we are experiencing more floods and flash floods remain one of the top killers. As climate changes and CO2 continues to rise, the oceans heat up, hurricanes seem to be intensifying more rapidly, especially near the coastline prior to landfall.

Quantifying and Communicating Climate Change Risk at First Street

Who: Ed Kearns (First Street Foundation Chief Data Officer)
View Recording: HERE

The First Street Foundation is quantifying and communicating the flood and inundation risks posed by a changing environment.  First Street has created a nation-wide assessment of flood risk for the contiguous United States (CONUS) and the District of Columbia, and is now sharing that assessment for free with the public through Flood Factor(TM). Risk scores for each of the approximately 142 million properties in CONUS were built upon open data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the United States Geological Survey (USGS), the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Flood risk from rivers, precipitation, sea level rise, and coastal storms have been combined into a single risk assessment methodology to raise individuals' awareness of their risks, and empower them to take steps to reduce their current and future flood risk exposure.

Putting Spatial Data to Work for COVID-19 Response and Recovery

Who: Estella Geraghty (Esri Chief Medical Officer)
When: Wednesday September 23rd, 1:00 – 2:00 PM ET
View Recording: HERE
View Slides: HERE

The response to COVID-19 is providing significant insight into how to improve data, information products, and outcomes. With maps and spatial analysis, organizations are delivering deeper understanding of virus trends, increased awareness of impacted populations, insights about where resources are needed most, and transparent communications with community stakeholders and the public. Location intelligence helps communities ensure testing sites are accurately placed, personal protective equipment (PPE) inventories are tracked, communities adhere to social distancing guidance and surge management is optimized. From indoor space management to contact tracing and community resilience, Dr. Geraghty will highlight a range of applications and success stories from GIS users around the world who are putting spatial data to work to support their COVID-19 response and recovery efforts.

2020 ESIP Summer Meeting Highlights

When: Thursday August 13th, 3:00 – 4:30 PM ET
Learn More & View Recording: HERE

The 2020 ESIP Summer Meeting Highlights Webinar will provide an overview of plenary and breakout sessions from the ESIP Summer Meeting held online (July 14th-24th, 2020). Whether you weren't able to attend the meeting in person or you're looking to see what happened in concurrent breakout sessions, this webinar is a great way for you to learn about what happened at the meeting and how to get involved in next steps.

Usability: How Usability Techniques Can Support Your Scientific Communities

Who: Sophie Hou (Data & Usability Analyst, Apogee Engineering – Contractor to the USGS)
When: Wednesday June 24th, 2:00 – 3:00 PM ET
View Recording: HERE
View Slides: HERE

At the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), it is critical that our scientific research and products are provided in a useful way to our communities. The USGS Community for Data Integration (CDI) Usability Collaboration Area focuses on bringing the USGS community together to 1) discuss usability challenges when serving scientific data, and 2) identify strategies that can help improve data’s usability from an end-user perspective. As the current lead for the USGS CDI Usability Collaboration Area, Sophie will provide an overview of how the Usability Collaboration Area is providing usability resources to the USGS community. Sophie will also discuss a few use cases for how she is applying the usability resources to USGS projects. Finally, as a former co-chair of ESIP’s Usability Cluster, Sophie will share her lessons learned for how to collaborate with our communities to optimize the usability of our scientific data.

CUAHSI HydroShare

Who: Jerad Bales, Anthony Castronova, Jeff Horsburgh
When: Thursday May 14th, 3:00 – 4:00 PM ET
Join: See the ESIP Telecon Calendar

The IT&I Committee will host ESIP's next Putting Data to Work Webinar, which will feature HydroShare, a platform for sharing hydrologic resources (data, models, model instances, geographic coverages, etc.), enabling the scientific community to more easily and freely share products, including the data, models, and workflow scripts used to create scientific publications. HydroShare also includes a variety of social functions, such as resource sharing within a specified group, publication with a DOI, and support for integrating external applications to view and use resources without downloading them. The presentation will provide an overview of HydroShare, details of CUAHSI Compute resources which can be accessed through HydroShare or in a standalone mode, and the metadata model used in HydroShare, as well as describe some community resources held by HydroShare, including comprehensive information on recent hurricanes and the complete Critical Zone Observatory data library.

ESIP Collaboration Area Highlights

When: Wednesday April 22nd, 3:00 – 4:30 PM ET
Join: https://global.gotomeeting.com/join/417506261
Dial in by phone: +1 (571) 317-3116 (Access Code: 417-506-261)
International Phone Numbers: Here

ESIP is home to 30+ vibrant and diverse community-driven collaboration areas centered around Earth science data challenges and opportunities. Several collaboration areas will share lightning presentations about their recent activities and efforts to increase the use and value of Earth Science data. This webinar aims to broaden awareness of ESIP collaboration area activities, increase communication and collaboration between existing collaboration areas, and invite new participants to join. To learn more about ESIP collaboration areas, see here.

Discrete Global Grid System in Action: Provision of Rapid Response During Australian Bushfires and Other Applications

Who: Shane Crossman & Irina Bastrakova (Hosted by IT&I Committee)
When: Thursday March 12th, 3:00 – 4:00 PM ET
View Recording HERE
View Slides HERE

Everything has a location. Location can be defined using descriptive terms (e.g. place names), geometry (e.g. geographic coordinates) and/or index notations (e.g. statistical boundaries). However, existing approaches and disconnected infrastructures limit our ability to discover, access and integrate spatial data across organisation and jurisdiction boundaries to produce up-to-date reliable information. The Location Index project (LOC-I) aims to introduce a consistent way to access, analyse and use location data to support the effective integration of socio-economic, statistical and environmental data from multiple data providers to support the spatially enabled delivery of Government policies and initiatives.

The devastation caused by the Australian Bushfires highlighted the need for a new approach for rapid data integration. The total burnt area during Autumn-Summer 2019-2020 is 72,000 square miles, which is an equivalent to a half of Montana or North Dakota and Delaware areas combined. Rapid response in provision of information on areas affected by the bushfires was required to support evaluation of the impact, and also planning the recovery process and support for families, businesses and the environment. This presentation will discuss application of the Discrete Global Grid System (DGGS) in bringing together diverse complex information from multiple sources to support the response process. The presentation will also discuss testing of the DGGS capability in other use cases.

2020 ESIP Winter Meeting Highlights

When: Wednesday February 5th 3:00 – 4:30 PM ET
View Recording and Slides HERE

The 2020 ESIP Winter Meeting Highlights Webinar provided an overview of plenary and breakout sessions from the ESIP Winter Meeting held in Bethesda, MD (January 7-9th, 2020). Whether you weren't able to attend the meeting in person or you're looking to see what happened in concurrent breakout sessions, this webinar is a great way for you to learn about what happened at the meeting and how to get involved in next steps.

Data for our Planet: Increasing the Use and Value of Global Information Infrastructures to Support Resilient Cities, Disaster Risk Reduction and Infectious Diseases

Lesley Wyborn, Erin Robinson, Francoise Pearlman, Jay Pearlman, Bob Downs
When: Wednesday November 13th 4:00 – 5:00 PM ET
View the Recording: HERE

Accessing and integrating data from heterogeneous sources is a significant barrier facing evidence-based responses to global grand challenges. To address this ISC-CODATA is preparing an international, coordinating research program; ESIP has developed a community of practice around earth science data standards; and ENVRI aims to align and share FAIR compliant in-situ data and services. This webinar will 1) invite the community to engage with these initiatives; 2) examine specific challenges relating to data accessibility, interoperability and reusability (FAIR); and 3) examine these issues around a set of pilot case studies, including infectious diseases, resilient cities and disaster risk reduction. Grand challenges need to access and integrate data from many different sources. Discovery and interoperability mechanisms are frequently suboptimal. Time and space is usually a key to integration, and remote sensing and in-situ Earth observation data play a crucial role. The session will allow detailed exploration of the issues in relation to case studies of significance to the community. It will explore the applicability and potential of the FAIR principles, ‘fitness for use’ criteria, Operational Readiness Levels, alignment of metadata specifications, and data cubes to contribute towards the solutions needed to assist data integration.

An Extensible Geospatial Data Framework (GeoEDF) for FAIR Science

Carol Song, Senior Research Scientist, Purdue University
Rajesh Kalyanam, Research Scientist, Purdue University
When: Friday October 25th, 1:00 – 2:00 PM ET
View the Recording: HERE

GeoEDF, an extensible geospatial data framework, aims to lessen and possibly remove such barriers by creating seamless connections among platforms, data and tools, making large scientific and social geospatial datasets directly usable in scientific models and tools. GeoEDF is designed to abstract away the complexity of acquiring and utilizing data from diverse data providers. Extensible data connectors will implement common data query and access a variety of protocols supporting both static and streaming data. Extensible data processors will implement common and domain-specific geospatial data processing such as resampling, format conversion, or a scientific simulation model. A plug-and-play workflow composer will allow users to string together data connectors and processors into reproducible workflows that can be executed in heterogeneous environments. Automated metadata extraction and annotation will be integrated into such workflows, supporting FAIR science through ease of data discovery and reproduction. By bringing data to the science, GeoEDF will accelerate data-driven discovery. This presentation will provide an overview of the project, including its objectives, system design, scientific use cases, and anticipated outcomes.

2019 NOAA Environmental Data Management Workshop Recap & New Approaches to Dealing with Increasing Volumes of Data for Numerical Weather Prediction

When: Friday September 20th, 2019 at 2:00 pm ET
View the Recording HERE

Join us for a recap of the very recent NOAA Environmental Data Management Workshop and for a presentation about the application of Machine Learning and, in particular, Deep Learning techniques for processing of satellite observation data to improve Numerical Weather Prediction by the team at the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Earth System Research Laboratory (ESRL). See contributors and read the full abstract here.

ESIP Summer Meeting Highlights Webinar

When: Thursday August 8th, 2019 at 12:30 pm ET
View the Recording: HERE

The 2019 ESIP Summer Meeting Highlights Webinar provided an overview of plenary and breakout sessions from the ESIP Summer Meeting held in Tacoma, WA (July 15th-19th, 2019). Whether you weren't able to attend the meeting in person or you're looking to see what happened in other breakout sessions, this webinar is for you.

Supporting Better Water Management and Planning in a Changing Climate

When: Friday June 21st, 2019 at 1:00 pm ET
View the Recording: HERE
Water planners and managers want their decisions to be based on the best available information. Yet, too often, there is a lack of two-way dialogue between suppliers of scientific information (e.g., researchers) and potential users of scientific information (e.g., water utilities) that create barriers and can lead to inappropriate uses. This presentation by Dr. Julie Vano promotes a conversation on how we might overcome these barriers. Dr. Vano will share details about newly released guidance on Dos and Don’ts for using climate information for water resources planning and management and highlight several complementary efforts, done in partnership with decision makers, to share information and foster engagement to improve climate resilience. More info here.

The Fourth National Climate Assessment: Translating Data to Inform Decisions

When: Friday May 17th, 2019 at 1:00 pm ET
View the Recording: HERE
Join us to hear from a panel of speakers on how the Fourth National Climate Assessment (NCA4) was developed, including what standards of transparency and traceability were used, and how the reach of NCA4 is being expanded through outreach and derived products. More info here.

ESIP Collaboration Area Highlights

When: Friday April 19th, 2019 at 1:00 pm ET
View the Recording: HERE
ESIP is home to 30+ vibrant and diverse community-driven collaboration areas centered around Earth science data challenges and opportunities. Several collaboration areas will share lightning presentations about their recent activities and efforts to increase the use and value of Earth Science data. This webinar aims to broaden awareness of ESIP collaboration area activities, increase communication and collaboration between existing collaboration areas, and invite new participants to join. To learn more about ESIP collaboration areas, see here.

How NASA, NOAA, and the USGS Increase the Use and Value of Earth Science Data and Information

Friday March 22nd, 2019 at 12:30 pm ET
View the Recording: HERE
Join us to hear from representatives of ESIP's sponsors, NASA, NOAA, and the USGS, on how their organizations contribute to increasing the use and value of Earth science data and information.