ICIS Draft Work Plan Q2-3 2012

In the iMarine BC1 http://wiki.i-marine.eu/index.php/Ecosystem_Approach_Community_of_Practice:_iMarine_Business_Cases, support for the EU Fisheries Policy, outlines the high-level project goal of the EA-CoPCommunity of Practice. in iMarine. The management of statistical data is one of the objectives, and the ICIS VREVirtual Research Environment. offers the technical infrastructure to reach this.

In the iMarine BC2 http://wiki.i-marine.eu/index.php/Ecosystem_Approach_Community_of_Practice:_iMarine_Business_Cases, Support to FAO’s deep seas fisheries programme, the management of source data likewise important. Also here curation facilities are needed to load e.g. to often huge Darwin Core datafiles.

The ICIS work plan aims to identify overlapping objectives of the 2 Business Cases by grouping them in technical objectives described in several clusters of technologies. This clearly evidences the potential re-use of components, driving down development cost, time and maintencne costs, while improving quality.

The work plan describes the activities for a finite period of time, where both iMarine Baord and technical teams feel comfortable they can meet a the requirements. It informs decision makers such as the iMarine Board on the potential solution, and may later guide them in their management and review of the activities carried out during, and help validate the results.

To be approved, the ICIS work plan will be discussed with relevant imarine Board members, WP3 representatives, PEB and WP6.

ICIS CURATION ARGUMENT

In ICIS, the curation of data is key to achieve any progress towards the objective of the project to manage flows of domain-specific data types (statistics, environmental data of various types, data related to biodiversity, and data ready for ontological reasoning and other forms of “semantic” processing).

The ICIS work plan for curation capitalizes on the available ICIS VREVirtual Research Environment.:

• The Problem: Curation of data covers the harmonization of data, and the persistence of the curation structure and workflow. It depends on reference data, and how these relate to values encountered in the datasets. The results of curated datasets needs to be persisted, either as new entitites, or merged with a previous set. All these areas need improvements before they will be adopted by a community.

• The proposed solution: the curation is orthogonal to the many activities in the project, as it is fundamental in data-flow management.

1. Harmonization;
2. Reference data management;
3. Use of reference data in curation;
4. Persiting results;
5. Persiting curation settings;
6. For the work-flow support, a solution is not envisaged in this planning period.

• In order to implement the solution, a concerted effort between project partners is needed. For each proposed stated solution, an AGILE approach is recommended, where a task team is assembled that releases regularly updates until the solution is reached.

The implemented solution has a goal to provide a full life-cycle curation of datasets.

The objectives can be grouped by the proposed sub-solutions:

1. Harmonization; Load a dataset, and curate all dimensional, attribute and value columns; persist these settings; re-use for a next batch, merge the results of curation work-flows
2. Reference data management; search a reference data-set to use in a curation; persist those settings; (More on this in another work plan)
3. Use of reference data in curation; if not all elements can match, define a reference data policy (freeze / add to reference / remove from dataset / modify data); persist those settings (More on this in another work plan)
4. Persiting results; After curation, save or merge (append to existing table); select from a data-policy (overwrite, flag, ignore); save those settings for a futer re-use;
5. Persiting curation settings; In addition to the reference data settings, also persist settings for: source-url (if non-csv loading is supported);
6. For the work-flow support, a solution is not envisaged in this planning period.

To reach the objectives, the following actions are foreseen;

1. Harmonization; CNR to discuss with FAO;
2. Reference data management; CNR to discuss with FAO on Codelistmanager;
3. Use of reference data in curation; CNR to discuss options with FAO for defining data policy, and implementation effort;
4. Persiting results; CNR to define a solution;
5. Persiting curation settings; CNR to define a solution;
6. For the work-flow support, a solution is not envisaged in this planning period.

To completed actions provide the foundation for the validation activities the implemented solution will include instructions for validators to assess the quality of the delivered solution.

• the ICIS strategy is based on the problems that are to be solved and what resources are available for solving the problems and what hindrances are to be overcome. The strategy of choice to reach the solution, according to the DoW, is based on well-proven Agile Development principles. Software components will be developed and released in short and continuous iterations, each release addressing the need of new functionality or the need to revise existing functionality. This choice impacts on how problems are described; rather than a few large problems, they need to cover multiple smaller ones.

The goals and objectives (when accomplished) are the output of the project.

The resources (when used) are the inputs of the project, and the aim of the strategy is to convert inputs into outputs.