Nabil R. Adam
In this paper, we focus on digital libraries in the domain of Environmental and Earth sciences. We view digital libraries (DL) as an infrastructure for supporting the creation of information sources, the movement of information across global networks, the effective and efficient interaction among knowledge producers, librarians, and information and knowledge seekers.
Recently, Rutgers University Center for Information Management, Integration, and Connectivity (CIMIC) has been designated as a NASA Regional Applications Center (RAC). Rutgers CIMIC and the Hackensack Meadowlands Development Commission (HMDC) of the state of New Jersey have agreed to collaborate on establishing a space and land-based environmental monitoring system to address HMDC's primary areas of interest including land monitoring, fire detection, water and air quality, urban planning as well as development of outreach educational materials and programs for environmental education. Specifically, the establishment of the NASA RAC at Rutgers CIMIC will help contribute to the region in three areas: (1) Environmental and economical development of the region, (2) multi- disciplinary instructional and research opportunities for faculty and students at collaborating institutions, (3) curriculum enrichment opportunities for elementary/high schools in the surrounding urban areas.
The NASA RAC at Rutgers CIMIC has just been augmented by a new major
initiative supported by the HMDC: establishing the Meadowlands
Environmental Research Institute (MERI) as a world-class center for the
scientific investigation of urban wetlands, their functioning,
restoration, and sustainable management. The research team, which is made up of faculty drawn from various academic
disciplines including Biological, ecological, Environmental, Geological,
and Information Sciences has identified the following as MERI's research
themes: vegetation patterns, mudflats, contaminant hotspots, scientific
data management, and water and air quality.
We are in the process of developing an Environmental Digital Library called DigiTerra to meet the goals outlined above and to serve our diverse scientific user community. DigiTerra will facilitate the collection, assimilation, cataloging and dissemination/retrieval of a vast array of environmental data that includes images from a variety of space borne satellites, ground data from continuous monitoring weather stations, water and air quality, maps, reports and data sets from federal, state and local government agencies.
We are developing DigiTerra as a multilayered architecture consisting of the following layers:
Figure 1: DigiTerra Architecture
The integration and interoperability layer. Concerned with collection, assimilation, cataloging and dissemination/retrieval of a vast array of environmental data, e.g., Images from a variety of space borne satellites, ground data from continuous monitoring weather stations, and maps, reports data sets from federal, state and local government agencies. There is a need efficient mechanism to integrate new data resources and provide seamless access to heterogeneous and autonomous sources
The data warehousing/data mining layer. Provides fast and efficient access to the integrated data and to provide efficient data analysis and complex queries without interrupting the operational processing at the underlying information sources. Specific issues to address include.
The concept indexing and content-based retrieval Layer. Provides efficient retrieval by suitably organizing the multimedia data based the concepts associated with the objects. Issues to be addressed include.
The universal access layer. Scientists wishing to access digital library objects possess varying capabilities and characteristics. User's capabilities include physical, technical, linguistics, and domain expertise. User's characteristics, on the other hand, include mobility, interests, preference and profile, and information appliances, e.g., PC, PDA, and TV. Universal access is concerned with having objects have built-in intelligence so that they can automatically manifest themselves to cater to different users' capabilities and characteristics. Specific issue to address include the ability to author objects suitable for automatic manifestation, to detect/identify and manage user capabilities and preferences/profiles, to accommodate the user mobility, and to detect the information appliance capabilities
The ontology layer.Enable users with diverse backgrounds to query across multiple domains. Such a layer must be able to cater to users with diverse backgrounds by offering broader, more general, ontologies that are interlinked to cover many domains
The security and privacy layer. provides support for security of objects through suitable access control, watermarking and secure networking technologies and protect privacy of users. There is a need to be able to have authorizations be specified based on users' qualifications and characteristics rather than the users themselves; to authorize access to an object be specified based on the contents within an object rather than the object identifier; grant access to a specific portion(s) of the object rather than the entire object; be bale to have security policies of different heterogeneous and autonomous sources integrated and enforced; and be able to support copyright protection and copy prevention.
Each of these layers engenders a unique set of research issues that will be addressed in the course of project and tested in the DigiTerra prototype.
Digital Libraries in Environmental and Earth sciences
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