Digital Watershed Virtual Observatory

The Virtual Observatory Two Minute Overview

Overview

The Digital Watershed Virtual Observatory has a Google map front-end and NCSA's Digital Synthesis Framework (DSF) supporting the middleware and backend. This instance of Digital Watershed Virtual Observatory was developed to support a Chicago watershed research project to provide a real-time decision support system for optimal control of the Combined Sewage Overflow system. The Chicago urban watershed- sewageshed is a test bed for this technology and provides its users a web browser interface where they can access existing sensor data such as the USGS rain gage data in near real-time and create virtual sensors. Virtual rain gages can be defined on the Google map by clicking the "Add VS" button and clicking on a location in the Google Map. Once the new sensor is defined, it triggers an associated workflow on a remote server to derive estimate rainfall values based on NEXRAD Next Generation Weather Radar) data. This capability provides the scientific community a new category of sensors and promotes community discussion and collaboration about sensor data which could lead to a decision about the next 'best' location for the next real sensor. Polygon-based virtual sensors are also supported through KML.

We support data provenance information to the virtual sensors and allow the workflows to run in a cloud computing environment. We also provide restful access to the virtual sensor data streams in various formats including XML, JSON, CSV (comma separated values) and OGC Sensor web enablement (SWE) Observation and Measurements data formats.

Click on the Google Map image to get an overview of this Digital Watershed VO.

The Technology

The watershed project is an end-to-end integration of free/open source software with NCSA software.

Open Source

Google Web toolkit (GWT), jQuery, Restlet , RDF, Google Map API, AMCharts, MySQL.

NCSA

NCSA CyberIntegrator, Digital Synthesis Framework (DSF) A Digital Synthesis Framework for Virtual Observatories

Team Members

Yong Liu, NCSA
Alejandro Rodriguez, NCSA
Luigi Marini, NCSA
Rob Kooper, NCSA
James Myers, NCSA
David Hill, NCSA
Barbara Minsker, NCSA and Civil and Environmental Engineering of UIUC
Xiaowen Wu, NCSA/CEE Department of UIUC
Terry McLaren, NCSA
Samuel Cornwell, Undergraduate student at the ECE Department of UIUC

Publications and Presentations:

Liu, Y., Cyber-enabled Real-Time Virtual Sensors, presented at the Workshop on Accessing & Using NexRad and Satellite Data, Nov 6th, 2009, NCSA
A. Rodriguez, Yong Liu and James D. Myers, Integrating Streaming Data and Semantic Repositories, Microsoft Escience Workshop, Pittsburg, October 15-17, 2009.
A. Rodriguez, Robert E. McGrath, Yong Liu and James D. Myers, Semantic Management of Streaming Data, 2nd International Workshop on Semantic Sensor Networks at the International Semantic Web Conference, Washington, DC, October 25-29, 2009.
Liu,Y., D. J. Hill, L. Marini, R. Kooper, A. Rodriguez, J. D. Myers (2009), Web 2.0 Geospatial Visual Analytics for Improved Urban Flooding Situational Awareness and Assessment, ACM GIS 09, November 2-6, 2009, Seattle, WA, USA.
Liu, Y., X. Wu, D. Hill, A. Rodrigues, L. Marini, R. Kooper, J. Myers, B. Minsker (2009)." A New Framework for On-Demand Virtualization, Repurposing and Fusion of Heterogeneous Sensors" , Sensor Web Enablement workshop 2009, The 2009 International Symposium on Collaborative Technologies and Systems , May 18-22, 2009, Baltimore, MD
Virtual Sensors in a Web 2.0 Digital Watershed. Y Liu, D J Hill, L Marini, R Kooper, A Rodriguez, J D Myers. (2008). Poster presented at AGU 2008 Fall Meeting. San Francisco, CA. December 15-19, 2008.
Virtual Sensors in a Web 2.0 Virtual Watershed. Yong Liu, Luigi Marini, Rob Kooper, Alenjandro Rodriguez, David Hill, James Myers, Barbara Minsker. (2008). Poster presented at the 4th IEEE International Converence on e-Science. Indianapolis, IN. December 7-12, 2008.
End-to-End Cyberinfrastructure for Real-Time Environmental Decision Support. David J. Hill, Barbara Minsker, Yong Liu, James Myers. (2008). Poster presented at the 4th IEEE International Converence on e-Science. Indianapolis, IN. December 7-12, 2008.
Near-Real-Time Precipitation Virtual Sensor Creation based on NEXRAD Level II Data. Yong Liu, David J. Hill, Alenjandro Rodriguez, Luigi Marini, Rob Kooper, Joe Futrelle, Barbara Minisker, James Myers. (2008). In Proceedings of the 16th ACM SIGSPATIAL Internal Conference on Advances in Geopraphic Information Systems (ACM GIS 2008). Irvine, CA. November 5-7, 2008.

Acknowledgements

The Office of Naval Research, which supports this work as part of the Technology Research, Education, and Commercialization Center (TRECC) (Research Grant N00014-04-1-0437). We also thank UIUC/NCSA Adaptive Environmental Sensing and Information Systems (AESIS) initiative for funding part of the work. IACAT also supports part of this work.