Progress in open-world, use-case driven

design and evolution of information

platforms

NFAIS 2015

Feb 22, 2015, Silver City, VA

Peter Fox (RPI*) pfox@cs.rpi.edu @taswegian and OTHERS!!

*Tetherless World Constellation (tw.rpi.edu, #twcrpi)

What’s ahead

• Start with a vision

• What’s the goal?

• Attributes of collaborations/ networks

• Matching with a development

methodology

– Examples..

– Use cases, and teams…

2Tetherless World Constellation

Vision?

• “Our vision is to develop, facilitate, and

maintain sustained multi-way engagement

of natural and social (?) scientists and

practitioners in multi-scale local to global

networks” [for X].

– Organization is required so participants (3) can

carry out their mission(s)

– Those participants (by defn.) may never be in

a single organization -> virtual organization (1)

(1) Virtual organizations as

Socio-Technical Systems

• ‘ …a geographically distributed organization

whose members are bound by a long-term

common interest or goal, and who

communicate and coordinate their work

through information technology’ (Ahuja)

Technology

Communication Patterns

Organizational

Structure

‘These members assume well

defined roles and status

relationships within the context of

the virtual group that may be

independent of their role and status

in the organization employing them’

(Ahuja et al., 1998)

Credit: B. Rouse (BEVO) 2008

Credit: B. Rouse (BEVO) 2008

Goal (2)

• We want to perform X involving all

(or as many) stakeholders and we

want robust science data presented

in forms that various end-users can

consume… and … value

Credit: B. Rouse (BEVO) 2008

Mapping

• (2) goal -> use case

• (3) participation -> team(s), vetting,

acceptance

• (4) outcomes/ vaue -> goals, metrics,

evaluation, incentives, data/information/

knowledge projects, responses, decisions

• (5) dynamic -> agile working format, small

iterations

• (6) evolution -> rapid development, evaluation

and iteration (open)

(1) Virtual Organization

• Outcomes/ values (4)

• Dynamic versus static (5)

• Evolvable/ ecosystem-like (6)

• Heterogenetic tolerance (7)

• Attributes of the organization (8)

• Roles/ responsibilities (9)

• Scale (10) or scalability

Communication patterns

A key feature of virtual organizations is

a high degree of informal

communication

Because of a lack of formal rules,

procedures, clear reporting

relationships, and norms, more

extensive informal communication is

required

Documentation is important

Mapping (ctd.)

• (7) heterogeneity -> information modeling

approach

• (8) organizational attributes -> networks

(10)

• (9) roles/ responsibilities -> actors in the

use case

• (10) scale -> … ask me if interested

• Application of social-technical (and socio-

ecological) understandings leads to an

informatics methodology …

Modern informatics methodology

• Use cases

• Stakeholders

• Distributed

authority

• Access control

• Ontologies

• Maintaining Identity

(13) Method

• Other factors

– Provenance (explanation…)

– Extensibility

– Application integration

– Terminology mediation

• In settings like this, we start on …

– Use case(s), including activity diagram

– Information modeling

– Evaluation and iteration

Use Cases Expose

System Requirements

• Exposes goals,

outcomes, actors/

roles, resources,

preconditions,

process flow,

artifacts

• And … semantics,

terms, concepts and

their relations

HazardPlanner

HazardAuthority

<uses><reports to>Custom Data

Products and Services

Custom Data Products and

Services

CAP-ready and other templates

ISO, FGDC, OGC, GEO

Standards for metadata

<incorporates>

<uses>

Summary Reports

Data on MSH Volcano, Local and regional Atmospheric and

Environment

<incorporates>

VolcanoAtmosphereEnvironment

<hastopic>

Science and Non-specialist Terminology

<uses>

<uses>

Summary Reports

Data on MSH Volcano,

Phenomenon

Science Terminology

<generatedby>

<available from>

<based on>

HazardPlannerHazard Portal

Agency Data Service USGS, NWS, EPA

Domain Vocabulary/

Ontology

<uses>

<uses>

Familiar Application

Tools

<accesses>

OGC and OPeNDAP

Standards for transport

<uses>

Non-specialist

Terminology

<uses> Mapping to Science

TerminologyAgency

<curates>

Agency Specialist

<operates>

Agency Specialist

Agency Monitoring Service USGS,

NWS, EPA

<archivedto>

<curates>

Systems v. Frameworks

• Rough definitions

– Systems have very well-define entry and

exit points. A user tends to know when

they are using one. Options for

extensions are limited and usually

require engineering

– Frameworks have many entry and use

points. A user often does not know when

they are using one. Extension points are

part of the design

– Modern Platforms built on FrameworksTetherless World Constellation 16

Example: Vision

• “Our vision is to develop, facilitate, and maintain

sustained multi-way engagement of natural and

social scientists and many practitioners in multi-

scale local to global networks for Large Marine

Ecosystems (LMEs)”.

• Goal: We want to perform routine assessments

of LMEs involving all (or as many) stakeholders

and we want robust science data presented in

forms that various end-users can consume…

and verify

NEFSC ESR

• Goal: Efficient generation of figures and

tables representing ecosystem data and

information products for the bi-annual

(or annual) North-east Fisheries

Science Center = NEFSC Ecosystem

Status Report (ESR).

• Use case documented

Northeast Status Report

Data TablesData

FiguresData Description

IntegratedData Products

Sof t ware,Tools & Apps

DataSources

Application-level mediation: mid-upper vocabularies,mapping to science and data terms

Semantic

interoperability

Semantic

interoperability

Semantic query,

hypothsis and

inference

Query,

access and

use of data

Metadata,

schema,

data

... ... ...

R, ACCESS, SAS, IDL

ORACLE

USGS NWISNEFSC SVDBS

NEFSC CFDBS

NEFSC OCDBS

Data-level semantic mediation: environmental data - SONET, O&M, OPM, PML, FGDC

Ecosystem Stat us Report

?

http://ipython.org/Screenshot of IPython Notebook used

to track both data and workflow

provenance

Code in

Python,

Matlab,

R, other

Stace Beaulieu

Massimo DiStefano

Andy Maffei

Use

Cases

• Faceted Browsing Interface

– Search by…

• award number and principal investigator

• geographic region and parameter (PAR data in southern

ocean)

• publication date

• Maintain current value chain (stakeholder)

– BCO-DMO acts as archivist, curator, and provider

• Technical developments

– Faceted browsing

– Discovery portals and self-deployed interfaces 22

Prototype

Implementation

Technology

Data Resources

23

• OpenSearch

services

• jQuery interface

• PHP backend

Virtual Solar-Terrestrial

Observatory• VSTO supports dataset search over…

– Time, instruments, parameters, physical domain…

• The best modality for searching each of these

“facets” is different

– E.g., calendar for time, hierarchy for parameters

and physical domain

• Using a faceted approach, search parameters

can be matched to tools providing the most

suitable modality…

– Underneath - using semantic query and basic

reasoning

Virtual Solar-Terrestrial

Observatory

Tree widget for hierarchical vocabularies

Calendar widget with unavailable dates

blocked out.

Searching over

millions of solar and

atmospheric data

records.

Result widget

dynamically

constructs

OPeNDAP

requests.

Team

Team: Roles and skill-sets

needed

• Facilitator *** (usual key skills, knows method) (1)

• Domain experts (literate, knows resources; data, applications, tools, etc.) (2-3)

• Modelers (to extract concepts, etc.) (1-2)

• Software engineers (architecture, technology) (1-2)

• Scribe (to write everything down) (1)

• The social aspect is key - it is a team effort

Goal of Analysis

• Get the team a

shared

understanding of

who is in the use

case, what they do

and interact with,

and what the stages

of the use case, and

relations are

• To get an informal

visual

representation of the

use case that begins

to sync up with the

written material

• The order in which

to do this is

dependent on the

team

Use Case

Use case myths

• Need lots (10s - 100s) of use cases to

build what is needed

• Need to be very general to get general

functionality

• Need to know ‘computer science’ to

create them, or the diagrams

• Have to get them perfect the first time

• Are only used for software development

• Many more …

Evaluation

Summing up…

• http://tw.rpi.edu/web/doc/TWC_Semanti

cWebMethodology

• http://tw.rpi.edu/web/courses/Semantice

Science

• See

http://tw.rpi.edu/media/latest/UseCase-

Template_SeS_2012

• Thanks for listening

Questions?

• pfox@cs.rpi.edu

• @taswegian

• tw.rpi.edu