SciScope: a participatory geoscientific web application

The combination of low-cost in situ sensors, internet connectivity, and commodity computing is changing earth science research. This unprecedented data availability is enabling science synthesis; studies that span disciplines, bridge local field, modeling and remote sensing methodologies and/or span local, regional, and global scales. Data discovery, retrieval, and heterogeneity act as cyberinfrastructure barriers to synthesis. Much of the available data is discovered by serendipity or word of mouth from independent, disconnected nodes with different interfaces and semantics. Before scientific analysis, data must be harmonized to a common understandable format. As the number of publishers increase, particularly when the publishers are small groups, this problem can only worsen. We have been developing SciScope (www.sciscope.org), a search tool that aggregates data set information and presents a simple map-based interface across diverse data publishers. SciScope unites data catalog, semantic, structural and syntactic mediation, and Geographical Information Systems (GIS) functions. The current catalog contains 1.7 million observation sites from five different sources in the United States and Australia. SciScope encourages participatory science. Data consumers can find and retrieve data sets simply as well as annotate data sets. Data contributors can register and upload data sets as well as extend the semantic mediation to enable richer data searches. SciScopes can be federated to bridge between science communities that may not be willing or able to share a single catalog. Copyright (C) 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.