[Kepler-dev] Introduction...

[Patrick Stein]

Hello all,

My name is Patrick Stein.  I work for the Laboratory for Imaging
Algorithms and Systems (LIAS) [1] in the Rochester Institute of
Technology's [2] Center for Imaging Science (CIS) [3].

We have done a great deal with scientific workflows for the NASA/USRA
SOFIA project [4].  We are involved with several other projects, too.
Of particular note at the moment is our Wildfire Airborne Sensor Program
(WASP) [5].  We are also closely connected to the Digital Imaging and
Remote Sensing (DIRS) [6] group in CIS.

Building upon the work that we did with SOFIA, we are starting design
work for our WASP data and algorithm architecture.  We will have a  
plethora
of multispectral image data.  There are many different things that we  
want
to do with this data.  Additionally, much of this data will be  
non-proprietary.

We want to make our datasets as available as possible.  But, we don't  
want
scientists (or even algorithm developers) to have to know the  
nitty-gritty
details about the way we have our repository organized if they just want
to make use of some of our data.  Some of our high-level goals are:
	* find a way to provide access to data from our repository (and other
		online repositories) that is easy and as data-independent
		as possible
	* find a way to help people find all of the free data available...
		a sort of science-data specific Google, if you will...
	* help scientists leverage the knowledge that other scientists
		bring by helping track what data scientists found useful
		for what types of science and what algorithms scientists
		found useful for that data/science
	* track cross-data correlations... people very often use this
		terrain data with that sensor data and this weather data
		with that water-quality data....

I believe that these goals feather neatly with the Kepler project.
For many of our users, we will need to have tools available in RSI's
IDL and ENVI [7].  So, it's not clear yet how directly we will be able
to employ Kepler's workflows.  But, after reading up on Kepler and
test-driving it a bit... It is definitely clear that whatever tools we  
in
LIAS come up with, we should hook them into Kepler as actors.

Here are some things that I'm looking for from y'all:
	* I'd love trial read-access to the Kepler CVS repository
	* I'd love to hear about types of data and data repositories
		that people have on the web
	* I'd love to hear what sort of criterion you use in your
		work when deciding which datasets to use

Thanks all,
Patrick

------------------------------
[1] http://www.rit.edu/~ficwww/LIAS.html
[2] http://www.rit.edu/
[3] http://www.cis.rit.edu/
[4] http://www.sofia.usra.edu/
[5]  
http://www.rit.edu/~930www/Proj/NewsEvents/2003/Apr01/ 
firedetection.html
[6] http://dirs.cis.rit.edu/
[7] http://www.rsinc.com/