IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Magazine - June 2015 - 54

has shown that any tool requiring individual researchers to
fill many forms before depositing their data has met with
limited success. Automated/semi-automated methods of
metadata creation are needed to create the metadata based
on existing publications, reports etc., and then require the
data producer to validate the auto-generated content.
Cybersecurity - Cybersecurity has become a major concern for all organizations, especially large organizations
such as federal agencies. Security policies are constantly
changing and can become a major impediment in allowing research community to effectively use tools and provisioned infrastructure such as compute and storage. The
challenge for future data systems will be to find the fine
balance required between security and openness.
VI. ESI TC ACTIVITIES
One of the objectives of ESI TC is to promote discussions
and forge collaborations within Remote Sensing community around the various issues described in the previous
sections. To meet this objective, ESI TC has organized an
invited session at IGARSS 2015 titled "Why Data Matters:
Value of Stewardship and Knowledge Augmentation Services".
The session seeks to initiate discussions within GRSS community around the topics of data stewardship and knowledge augmentation services. Data stewardship invited talks
will focus on current approaches in planning, acquisition,
processing, archiving and distribution of the data, as well
as identifying the best practices. The knowledge augmentation services talks will focus on functionalities that serve
as the "support layer" designed to reduce the data 'use' friction and provide the bridge between data sets and the data
user community. These services encompass infrastructure,
tools, user services and data specific expertise. Invited
talks in this session will address some of the challenges
addressed in this paper.
In addition to the invited session, ESI TC is helping
organize the fourth international conference on AgroGeoinformatics (Agro-Geoinformatics 2015) [1], to be
held in Istanbul, Turkey, on July 20-24, 2015. Several ESI
TC members serve as scientific committee members for
this conference.
ESI TC also seeks to actively promulgate informatics
education to develop the next generation of scientists and
engineers who will solve some the issues described earlier.
ESI TC is supporting the 2015 GeoInformatics Summer
School to be held at Wuhan University, Wuhan, China
during June 04-14, 2015 [11]. The workshop will introduce

the participants to basic spatial statistical methods for
analyzing spatial data, as well as cover some key concepts
on big data analysis, data lifecycle, data management and
infrastructure, and big data applications. The workshop
entails lectures by leading experts, demonstrations and
hands-on tutorials.
As mentioned earlier, standards play an essential role in
the knowledge generation lifecycle. GRSS, through ESI TC
members, contributes volunteer time to both ISO Technical
Committee 211 - Geographic Information, and the Open
Geospatial Consortium.
To learn more or participate in ESI TC, contact the
chairs Dr. Ramachandran and Yue (rahul.ramachandran@
nasa.gov, geopyue@gmail.com) and join the IEEE GRSS
Earth Science Informatics group on LinkedIn (http://
www.linkedin.com/groups/IEEE-GRSS-Earth-ScienceInformatics-5136161).
REFERENCES
[1] Agro-Geoinformatics. (2015, Sept. 4). Agro-Geoinformatics. [Online]. Available: http://agro-geoinformatics.org/
[2] G. Bell, T. Hey, and A. Szalay, "Beyond the data deluge," Science,
vol. 323, no. 5919, pp. 1297-1298, 2009.
[3] ESIP. (2015, Sept. 4). Earth science information partnership. [Online]. Available: http://www.esipfed.org/
[4] Gartner. (2015, Sept. 4). Gartner's hype cycle. [Online]. Available:
http://www.gartner.com/technology/research/methodologies/
hype-cycle.jsp
[5] P. B. Heidorn. (2008). Shedding light on the dark data in the
long tail of science. Library Trends. [Online]. 57(2), pp. 280-299.
Available: http://muse.jhu.edu/content/crossref/journals/library_
trends/v057/57.2.heidorn.html
[6] S. J. S. Khalsa and R. Ramachandran, "Earth science informatics
comes of age," IEEE Geosci. Remote Sens. Mag., Dec. 2014.
[7] R. Kohavi, N. J. Rothleder, and E. Simoudis, "Emerging trends in
business analytics," Commun. ACM, vol. 45, no. 8, pp. 45-48,
2002.
[8] Frontiers in Massive Data Analysis, National Research Council, Ottawa, ON, Canada, 2013.
[9] RDA. (2015, Sept. 4). Research data alliance. [Online]. Available:
https://rd-alliance.org/
[10] S. Sicular. (2014). Gartner's big data definition. Forbes. [Online].
Available: http://www.forbes.com/sites/gartnergroup/2013/03/27/
gartners-big-data-definition-consists-of-three-parts-not-to-beconfused-with-three-vs/
[11] (2015, Sept. 4). GeoInformatics summer school. Wuhan
Univ., China. [Online]. Available: http://www.lmars.whu.edu.
cn/geosummerschool/
GRS

ieee Geoscience and remote sensing magazine

june 2015

http://http:// http://www.linkedin.com/groups/IEEE-GRSS-Earth-Science http://www.agro-geoinformatics.org/ http://www.esipfed.org/ http://www.gartner.com/technology/research/methodologies/ http://muse.jhu.edu/content/crossref/journals/library_ https://www.rd-alliance.org/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/gartnergroup/2013/03/27/ http://www.lmars.whu.edu

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Magazine - June 2015