Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
As experiments are clearly impossible at this scale, heliophysics is an
“
event-
driven
science since it relies on the analysis of events that have already happened
to validate assumptions and theories. Satellites, telescopes and other instruments
collect data from numerous places scattered around the Solar System, and this
information is used to investigate events. Raw data collected from the instruments is
calibrated and processed to extract metadata that describe outstanding features (e.g.
speed or width for a CME) of the phenomena. Metadata extracted in this fashion is
then used to build indexes of features and events called catalogues. Scientists use
query catalogues to
”
find interesting events, to
find where and when to look for their
signatures, and to
find which instrument collected relevant data for their studies.
We can observe that the interplay between data and metadata is very relevant in
the
field as metadata are extracted from raw data and, on the other hand, metadata
are queried to
find data for further analysis. In addition to data processing and
metadata query, heliophysicists develop conceptual and mathematical models of the
phenomena and the environment of the Solar System, and test them against the
scienti
c evidence gathered so far. A particularly pressing issue is the need to
simulate and understand how phenomena propagate throughout the Solar System.
Scientists tackle this with mathematical and physical abstractions called propaga-
tion models. For their research, heliophysicists need different tools: Large com-
putational and storage infrastructures to process data, extract metadata and execute
simulations; catalogues and web-based access portals to query and retrieve the
catalogues of metadata; and cooperative tools and platforms to allow scientists to
cooperate with each other, share results, and jointly develop and execute models.
The heliophysics community has already developed many online tools to tackle
some of these problems, and in the last 3
4 years has started to use workflows to
-
formalize and execute complex scienti
c procedures. In the community, the focus is
nowadays on how to best orchestrate the existing tools to support a community that,
although small in numbers, shows a surprising variety of user pro
les.
14.2 HELIOGate
To address the needs of the heliophysics community, the SCI-BUS project has
developed the HELIOGate portal. The aim of HELIOGate is to support two main
area of the research (namely data processing and event investigation with a special
focus on propagation models). HELIOGate aims at supporting users with widely
different pro
les and inclinations to orchestrate existing web services and to
develop and integrate them with their own code. HELIOGate is now connected with
the web services of three projects: HELIO, Automated Multi-Dataset Analysis
(AMDA), and Virtual Solar Observatory (VSO).
HELIO (Bentley 2009, 2010, 2011; HELIO 2009) was an FP7-funded effort that
created the infrastructure for a virtual observatory speci
cally target to the helio-
physics community. HELIO has several characteristics that stress its relevance to
HELIOGate;
first, it was intended to be as workflow oriented and it introduced the
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