Integrating Heterogeneous and Very Large Datasets for Global Water Cycle Studies: a Case Study for GEOSS

Chair: Ryosuke Shibasaki, Director, Professor, Center for Spatial Information Science, University of Tokyo

To support global water cycle studies, a wide variety of global observational data ranging from ground observational or in-situ data, satellite imagery to climate model simulation results have to be integrated. The data are heterogeneous and reflect dynamic changes and geographical variations of global environmental systems. The integration process requires;

• quality evaluation and control, especially for diversified field observational data,
• metadata design to help find necessary data,
• provision of ontology-like information to interlink different data dictionaries and models and subsequently help interpret data,
• data integration system to help handle and analyse very large integrated datasets,
• development of cutting-edge applications using the integrated datasets through the data integration system.

To cover the aspects above, the proposed session plans to invite speakers who are making significant contributions to CEOP, Coordinated Enhanced Observation Period, which is build as the foundation of the World Climate Research Program (WCRP) in cooperation with WMO and CEOS (the Committee on Earth Observation Satellites under the framework of Integrated Global Observing Strategy Partnership (IGOS-P).

Since GEOSS (Global Earth Observation System of Systems) is also coordinated efforts to integrate observational data to create useful information for the social benefit areas such as disaster mitigation, food security and health, it is very fruitful to share the experiences and findings obtained in CEOP.