Difference between revisions of "The TimeSeries Virtual Research Environment"

Revision as of 16:58, 18 October 2012

Description

The TimeSeries Virtual Research EnvironmentA ''system'' with the following distinguishing features: ''(i)'' it is a Web-based working environment; ''(ii)'' it is tailored to serve the needs of a Community of Practice; ''(iii)'' it is expected to provide a community of practice with the whole array of commodities needed to accomplish the community’s goal(s); ''(iv)'' it is open and flexible with respect to the overall service offering and lifetime; and ''(v)'' it promotes fine-grained controlled sharing of both intermediate and final research results by guaranteeing ownership, provenance, and attribution. is conceived to provide its users with a working environment focused on gCube facilities for managing time series. This environment supports the load of time series objects, the curation and validation by relying on authoritative code lists, the sharing of such objects with co-workers, the production of graphs, the visualization through a GIS service.

URI: https://portal.i-marine.d4science.org/group/timeseries

Functionality

The main facilities this VREVirtual Research Environment. offers are:

• Time Series Management: to enable users to import, curate and manage time series. This is a comprehensive and feature-rich environment that support data managers during the whole life cycle of data management from capture to publishing and visualisation. In enable data managers to import and transform CSV files in time series, i.e. tabular data having proper types associated with columns eventually referring to code lists – reference datasets representing recognized value instances of the elements the dataset is about, e.g., species, zones, countries. The environment guarantees that the time series are compliant with the defined types and code lists. Besides the curation, the environment supports the analysis of the data by enabling a user to (i) perform operations like grouping and filtering, (ii) producing charts and GIS maps (if the data have geographic features) and (iii) analysing the data via an R environment. Finally, the environment supports the publishing of time series in the infrastructure by equipping them with rich metadata so that such resources can be used in other application contexts;

• Code Lists Management: to enable the users to import and manage code lists, i.e. reference datasets representing recognised value instances of the elements the dataset is about. Such environment enable users to import CSV files or existing code lists from SDMX repositories, curate them when needed, inspect the current values, and produce and publish new versions that can be used during the curation phase of a time series. Code lists are annotated with rich metadata capturing attribution and lineage;

• Workspace: to enable every user to store and organise the information objects he/she is interested to work with. In addition to that, the user is allowed to collaborate with other users by sharing objects and messages;

• VREVirtual Research Environment. Management: to enable authorised users (i.e. VREVirtual Research Environment. Managers) to manage other users using or willing to access the VREVirtual Research Environment.. VREVirtual Research Environment. Managers are enabled to (i) authorise users in accessing the VREVirtual Research Environment., (ii) assign or withdraw roles to users, (iii) remove users, and (iv) send a communication to the current users.

Data

The main datasets that are available via the services hosted by this VREVirtual Research Environment. include a series of code lists including FAO and IRD SDMX repositories.

Software