AgMIP Data Aggregator: Leveraging Globus Online and HUBzero to Make Global Spatial Data Accessible
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Abstract
As part of the Agricultural Model Intercomparison and Improvement Project (AgMIP, http://www.agmip.org), the Global Gridded Crop Model Intercomparison group ran a suite of global climate models and crop models to estimate historical and future changes in yields for crops under different climate change and irrigation scenarios. While the output of this comprehensive modeling endeavor is freely available, significant challenges remain if one wishes to utilize this data. First, this archive consists of more than 36,000 global grids with spatial resolution of 0.5x0.5 and organized in complex layers of folders, making it difficult to navigate and locate the data of interest. Second, this archive is accessible only through Globus Online. While Globus Online provides reliable data transfer, a user needs to set up a local Globus endpoint, if one does not already exist, in order to download data from the archive. Finally, after acquiring data, a user may need programming skills to process data in its native NetCDF format.
Working with the AgMIP archive creators, the GeoShare project developed the AgMIP Aggregator tool to make the AgMIP data archive broadly accessible. Built on HUBzero tool framework, AgMIP Aggregator integrates Globus Online inside the tool, making data access, processing and visualization available via its graphical user interface. Any GeoShare hub user can indicate their interest by selecting the model, crop, and other variables, download and aggregate data to any user-defined level, and visualize results as thematic maps. In this presentation we will describe our effort in creating the AgMIP tool and enabling Globus Online in HUBzero. Our experience in dealing with the data challenges on the GeoShare hub will be beneficial to researchers and tool developers alike as they tackle the rapid growth of scientific data collections.
Cite this work
Researchers should cite this work as follows:
- Lan Zhao, Carol Song, Nelson B. Villoria, Hongjun Choi, and Steven Clark (2014), "AgMIP Data Aggregator: Leveraging Globus Online and HUBzero to Make Global Spatial Data Accessible," HUBzero annual conference.