Call for Collaboration in IPY
EarthSLOT
For further information, please go to:
http://www.earthslot.org/earthslot_ipy2.php
or contact:
Matt Nolan
E-mail: matt.nolan [at] uaf.edu
Dear Colleague,
The International Polar Year of 2007-2008 is fast approaching and the
science community needs new tools to both coordinate this massive
international activity and explain it to the outside world, and I think
that the sooner such tools are available, the better. Therefore, I would
like to encourage the community and its organizational infrastructure to
begin making use of EarthSLOT as one of those coordination and outreach
tools.
As a demonstration of EarthSLOT's science coordination and outreach
capabilities, I have created an IPY-specific module that allows users to
locate and examine the 880 Expressions of Intent (EOIs) by flying over
high-resolution 3D terrain with video-game quality. Because spatial
coordinates for the proposed-projects were not provided in the EOIs, I
placed each above the capital of the country from which they were sent,
usually above the nearest large airport for lack of a better location.
From space, users view a spinning globe and can identify which countries
submitted EOIs by the national flag that hovers above those countries.
Once closer to ground level, the names of the lead investigators become
visible, along with the 15 meter (or better) resolution imagery in 3D
perspective. A tooltip over the name displays the EOI's title and
clicking on the investigator's name opens a window with the EOI itself.
Names are organized by IPY categorizations. Users can freely fly over
the surface of the earth and discover these EOIs, or they can search by
name or country and be flown there. The purpose of this module is not
only to facilitate coordination and logistics amongst PIs for the
upcoming June proposal deadline, but also to demonstrate how EarthSLOT
can be used in your own science projects, in terms of science
applications and education and outreach. We hope to continue
coordination efforts by serving actual project locations submitted as
part of the June proposals, including both arctic and antarctic
projects. In the meantime, EarthSLOT is currently being used to
facilitate logistical support of arctic projects funded by the US
National Science Foundation; access to the IPY and NSF databases is
described on the EarthSLOT website.
Essentially, the ability to fly in 3D has been around for a long time,
but it usually took a few in-house geeks working full-time to create
site-specific applications - now those geeks are located in Fairbanks
and anyone can take advantage of their efforts to visualize any location
in the world with minimal or no cost. Therefore, I see EarthSLOT playing
a service role in IPY - we will take care of the difficult and expensive
tasks of serving the world in 3D, leaving you to do the fun, easy, and
cheap part of creating science, logistics, and outreach applications
using it. Towards these ends, I am looking for international
collaborators who have explored EarthSLOT as it is now and can help lead
it on the best path towards IPY. Such partners could include anyone from
the IPY science management office, to National program or agency
offices, to individual PIs, to logisticians, to educators - it is likely
that everyone involved with these efforts can find a use for EarthSLOT.
It is an easy to use and modify tool and can be integrated into other
web-pages, such that users can independently develop modules and
applications using our 3D terrain and imagery as a base. At the least,
EarthSLOT is an easy and effective way to make terrain-visualization MPG
movies that can be incorporated into other web pages or presentations.
At best, it could serve as THE silver bullet tool that brings the
excitement of IPY research into the public's eye and stimulates the next
generation of polar scientists to take on some of the many scientific
challenges we all see coming in the future. But this largely depends on
community involvement and contributions, as well as our ability to
attract funding to keep the service viable. That is, we're not funded
for this purpose as yet, so we are in the same position as everyone else
in needing to seek grant funding, and are therefore looking for a
variety of partners to include us in their IPY proposals due in June.
In terms of IPY coordination in the next few months, I am happy to host
and serve in 3D any geospatial information related to identifying the
locations of your proposed IPY projects. Simply send me an Excel
spreadsheet with columns containing the latitude, longitude, and
location names of your study areas, as well as a tooltip string and url
if you want one (an example is on the web page). If you have transects
or polygons you would like to display, please send a GIS shapefile (with
attributes of name, tooltip, and url); any location (eg. Arctic,
Antarctic, ocean) is fine. I will continue to compile these into the IPY
module described above, such that you and your colleagues can share this
information amongst yourselves and with others. Hopefully, such
geospatial logistical information will also be required as part of the
June proposal guidelines and compiled for easy incorporation into tools
like this.
The website provides further details on how to get involved and start
contributing content on your own:
http://www.earthslot.org/earthslot_ipy2.php
Matt Nolan
E-mail: matt.nolan [at] uaf.edu