19.06.2014 IAEA

Objective:

To meet with Paul Harris to explain iMarine and how MARiS could use the iMarine data infrastructure.

Background

The IAEA UN Agency has an office in Monaco responsible for dissemination information on nuclides measurements in the marine environment. They are interested to use iMarine as a data sharing and analysis infrastructure. The e-infrastructure would improve the sharing and synthesis of IAEA data in a 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. (VREVirtual Research Environment.). In creating such an environment, the aim is to improve the use and accessibility of data for the purpose of collaborative research.

Key Facts

• IAEA can share test data to make accessible through the iMarine gateway;
• IAEA is interested in a VREs for data sets harmonization, merging and dissemination;
  • For example the TabularDataLab VREVirtual Research Environment. supports the management of tabular data and is tailored to serve the needs of data curators and managers. The TabularDataLab VREVirtual Research Environment. can import, curate, analyse and publish tabular data resources in a collaborative way.
  • iMarine can also offer IAEA access to a wide spectrum of datasets, see Useful Links.

Potential ways MARiS could use iMarine

• Dissemination of MARiS data. Data could be made accessible to users either by either serving it directly from iMarine servers or indirectly if the data remained on IAEA servers. Exposing MARiS data would be an easy task for iMarine.
• MARiS database entry and management. iMarine could create an environment to manage the upload of data into the MARiS database. It has the capacity to correct spellings and check names, which, for example, would be particularly useful for ensuring the consistency of lab IDs or species names and is currently done manually.
• Using Proficiency Tests (PT) to ensure data quality. The quality of data in MARiS must be assured, but making sure this is the case can be difficult and sometimes subjective. A solution that offers a quantitate assessment of data quality is that of linking PT results with data produced from the same labs. Currently, linking PT results and data from the same lab would be done offline with spreadsheets. iMarine could offer a way of bring PT results and data together so that QC assessment could be done online in a consistent manner. It was estimated that it would take about a month of development to implement such a system.
• In the same spirit as integrating PT results with datasets to manage QC, the issue of ensuring continuity of metadata from a Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS) into MARiS was also discussed. This could also be area that iMarine could help with MARiS data management.
• Facilitate the inclusion of other major data providers to MARiS.

Items to Consider for MARiS

• What are needs and requirements for handling data?
• Who are users?
• How to use MARiS data?

Funding and Costs

• the iMarine current infrastructure will be maintained for a limited number of years after project closure, and additional resources are sought.
• iMarine is looking for funding from private and public entities to allow it to continue to develop.
• No figure for the cost of MARiS using the iMarine platform could be quoted at this time because post September 2014 funding is currently unknown. However, the cost for iMarine to host and serve MARiS data could be relatively small (depending on datsets size and management requirements).