All FUTUREVOLC partners agree that successful integration of space-based and in-situ data is a timely and important step towards their common goal of improving geohazard monitoring and research. FUTUREVOLC will allow access to large and diverse data volumes, hitherto unprecedented at volcano observatories or at WOVO. Data will be provided to the WOVOdat project which is building a database of global monitoring data. Under coordination of the Committee on Earth Observation Satellites (CEOS), nearly all satellite data providers have already established procedures and means for electronic data provision, some of which are included in the FUTUREVOLC e-infrastructure. Under the coordination of the European Plate Observatory System (EPOS) and the U.S. institutions (U.S. Geological Survey and Unavco/Earthscope), the data providers of the FUTUREVOLC partnership are adopting the concept of a volcanic data supersite providing real-time data viewers as well as sophisticated data and tool sharing mechanisms. Users will gain access to the supersite data sharing facilities through a one time registration (similar to GEBCO, the General Bathymetric chart of the Oceans). Data will be stored at the supersite with the sole purpose of sharing it among registered users. Under special circumstances, private data storage space will be available users, but a reasonable publication date will have to be provided for the data. Necessary measures will be taken to ensure safety of all data at the site, and the reliability of the site‘s services, and to protect it from abuse. Collaboration with the consortium is not mandatory, but recommended for scientists outside of the FUTUREVOLC consortium
FUTUREVOLC follows the GEO (Group on Earth Observations) recommendations on architecture and data management thereby following the vision set forth by GEOSS (the Global Earth Observation System of Systems).
The aim of the FUTUREVOLC project is to develop and implement a data access policy based on the GEO 2012-2015 work plan agreed during the GEO-VIII plenary meeting in Istanbul 2011. The European Plate Boundary Observatory (EPOS), which also serves as the co-lead of the GEO Supersites, will advise and guide the implementation of data sharing; CEOS will provide the space-based data, and FUTUREVOLC will provide the in situ data.
The objectives of the FUTUREVOLC data policy are:
- To converge and harmonize observation methods and tools, to promote the use of standards and references, inter-calibration and data assimilation.
- To enhance interoperability between participating organizations, including production of technical specifications for collecting, processing, storing, and disseminating shared data, metadata and data products.
- To facilitate data management, information management, and common services, to promote the data sharing principles of the GEO Plenary, recognizing relevant international organizations,, national policies and legislation.
FUTUREVOLC defines three main data categories:
- Real-time data streams. This category consists of various types of continuous data streams from well-established sensors. This type of data can be made available through links on a webpage, views on a webpage or, in certain circumstances, by direct streaming upon request. Data sources will include seismic stations, GPS stations, strain-meter stations, and Web-cams.
- Near real-time data. Data in this category represents processed data that will be made available after a short delay, normally within a few hours of the source data creation. This data may be useful for numerical ash dispersion prediction and forecasting, monitoring of natural hazards, disaster relief, agriculture and homeland security to name a few examples. Data products, amongst others, are seismic data, GPS data, camera images of ongoing eruptions, and gas measurements. Data sources include geochemical sensors, meteorological stations, radiosondes, infrasound networks, lightning networks, electromagnetic sensors at volcanoes, the Icelandic radar network, and high-speed and time lapse cameras. This data will be made available via FTP.
- Science products. For latency independent research and applications, long term studies and trend analyses, standard science products should be used. These are created using the best available ancillary, calibration and ephemeris information, and are an internally consistent, well-calibrated record of the Earth’s geophysical properties. They may include InSAR and GPS processed results, ash dispersion model results, infrasound recordings and others. This type of data is subject to stringent quality controls and possibly manual curation to ensure the best possible quality for scientific research. The supersite will keep users informed on the progress of validating such data and regularly update publication schedules.
To ensure reliability of data and to protect the supersite from misuse, The FUTUREVOLC partners will devise specific rules and procedures that must be followed when uploading data to the supersite. Rules and procedures may differ for FUTUREVOLC partners and external users.The partners will develop a plan containing a full list of both the real and near-real time datasets that will be shared at the supersite, how they are produced, data limitations, sharing details, presentation and a release schedule for each dataset before the launch of the project. Both the plan and the schedule will be regularily revised and updated during the lifetime of the project.
The whole point of storing data at the supersite is to share it among registered users. Therefore all datasets will be shared among all registered users immediately after they are stored at the supersite. Otherwise their publication date will be posted at the supersite, citing reasons for delay.
Data hub and management:
a) The aim is to develop a data sharing system where seismic, volcanological, meterological and other data will be stored and made accessible according to the FUTUREVOLC data distribution policy and agreements. To ensure data availability, the data stored at the supersite will be backed up at the IMO and access redundancy secured both locally and internationally.
Notes and confines of full data availability at the data hub:
Data will be stored long-term at the FUTUREVOLC supersite but some data may at some point be subject to compression and/or relocation from its orignal storage point, possibly affecting availability temporarily. The FUTUREVOLC partners will devise and publish a timeplan detailing any datasets subject to such changes.
Other limitations on data availability include:
b) Excessive storage requirements: Specific long term data, such as data from cameras that record up to 15 GB per minute, are for technical reasons available in full temporal and spatial resolution upon request on hard disk, or de-sampled in near real time at the cost of reproduction.
c) Qualification and first-publish requirements: Doctoral dissertations and other qualification theses, dependent on first publication of data might lead to conflicts with open data policy, warranting a limited retardation period. Project partners need to request and justify the retardation period, which will be annually reviewed and decided on by the external advisory board.
d) Quality checks of new data products The quality of available data products will be clearly indicated on the web interface; i.e. data are available at different quality levels (raw data unverified, verified, manually curated, and analyzed).
The external advisory board will annually control and externally audit the FUTUREVOLC data policy and communicate recommendations for infrastructure and data policy improvements and other necessary changes.