ICAN FUNDING Group Conference Calls
Page last updated, 7:51 p.m. Pacific time, 16 Feb 2008 | Return to ICAN Working Groups Page
Next telecon: late February/early March
Open Tasks
- planning for the July 2008 workshop
- determining the ICAN objectives
- the broader objectives with regards to other stakeholder involvement
- an outline of workshop elements - how long; split ICAN-stakeholders-EEA segments
- timelines of actions
ICAN Workshop 3 Coordinators' Conference Call
Friday, 14 February 2008, 9:00 a.m. Pacific / 5:00 p.m. Europe - 1 hour in duration
Participants: Ned Dwyer (chair) (CMRC), Val Cummins CMRC), Dawn Wright (OSU)
Actions Items
Action 1: DW to speak to Tony LaVoi regarding activities on federated atlases in the US.
Action 2: DW/ND to seek clarification on funding of attendees from the EEA.
Action 3: ND/ VC to prioritise European/rest of the world participants. Recommendation will be forwarded to the EEA.
Action 4: ND to draft a form of words to define the roles of the three organisations in the events and circulate to DW and EEA for agreement.
Action 5: DW to speak with John Helly and Roy Lowry (BODC- UK) to ask them to lead up drafting of an ICAN governing structure.
Action 6: VC/ND to draft a 2 page strategy statement. This will then be disseminated to the wider ICAN group and a teleconference will be arranged to discuss it.
Action 7: DW to stay informed of NSF funding opportunity and co-ordinate a proposal.
Action 8: ND to discuss with demonstrator developers and determine when a working version should be complete.
Action 9: DW to circulate details regarding call for book proposals and all to consider potential participation
Minutes
1. Copenhagen meeting
This meeting runs over four days. It was agreed that, subject to clarification and agreement with the EEA, the first two days should be a closed session reserved to invited members of the core ICAN community. The second two days should be open to a wider audience, both invitees and interested parties who wished to attend.
In order to avoid confusion in terminology suggested working titles for the events could be ICAN workshop (days 1-2) and Atlas conference (days 3-4). To confirm with EEA.
A theme will help give focus to the events. It was agreed that this could be the development of supra-national and federated atlases. On the EU side this fits with the new regional seas approach in the Marine Strategy Directive and with the recommendation on a European Atlas of the Sea in the Maritime Policy. In the US, the theme fits with the West coast governors’ agreement on ocean health and conservation and therefore the need to join up atlases in California, Oregon and Washington. It is also pertinent to NOAA to realise a federal level view as discussed with Tony LaVoi in Oregon last year. Globally this fits with the development of the African Atlas, the emerging Caribbean atlas and the already existing state wide environmental atlases in Australia.
Some of the issues that can be presented, discussed and elaborated on at the ICAN Workshop in this context are
1. Justification for super-national atlases. E.g. Presentation of policy developments in the US and in Europe.
2. How can ICAN inform moves towards joined-up atlas in an international context?
3. What are the technical developments that can facilitate development and emergence of super-national atlases. Presentation of interoperability prototype (MIDA/OCA)?
4. What institutional processes can foster the development of super-atlases?
5. Future directions / role of ICCN.
Subject to discussion with the EEA, the Atlas conference could have a European focus (with specific reference to the European Atlas of the Sea). The conference could be informed by presentations from ICAN contributors to facilitate comparisons between European developments with other regions of the world. The conference could be targeted towards attendance by a wide audience, including potential end users of super-national atlases.
Action 1: DW to speak to Tony LaVoi regarding activities on federated atlases in the US.
Funding for participants by the EEA needs to be clarified, in particular with regard to the US, in order that key attendees can be targeted and confirmed. Two invite letters could be circulated, one for the ICAN Workshop + Atlas conference, confirming that participation is paid and another for the Atlas conference only, where no funding is provided.
Action 2: DW/ND to seek clarification on funding of attendees from the EEA.
Recognising that the EEA will only be able to fund a certain number of attendees, prioritisation of the attendance list needs to be carried out, both for the ICAN Workshop and for the Atlas conference. For the conference, participation form key participants in EU projects such as HERMES, etc. would be appropriate. DW has already prioritised US participants
Action 3: ND/ VC to prioritise European/rest of the world participants. Recommendation will be forwarded to the EEA.
As OSU-CMRC have been the drivers of the ICAN initiative they should have an equally recognised role in the chairing of the ICAN workshop. Appropriate terminology should be found to recognise the roles of the EEA/OSU/CMRC in both events. It should be noted that the EEA are both the main sponsor and the host of the event. The pre-announcement and other formal invitation letters should be signed by all three organisations.
Action 4: ND to draft a form of words to define the roles of the three organisations in the events and circulate to DW and EEA for agreement.
The co-ordinating committee is made up of representatives of the EEA/OSU/CMRC. People form other organisations may be involved in aspects of the organisation (e.g. J. Helly, R. Lowry, S. Claus). These should get acknowledgement. A programme committee or some other such entity may be the appropriate way to do this.
2. Formalisation of ICAN governing structure
A structure should be defined in advance of the Workshop. This can then be presented, modified by the ICAN community and ratified at the workshop itself. John Helly came up with a draft MOA at the CORK conference, but little work was done subsequently.
Action 5: DW to speak with John Helly and Roy Lowry (BODC- UK) to ask them to lead up drafting of an ICAN governing structure.
3. Future direction and funding possibilities for ICAN
VC said that a mid-term (e.g. 5 year) strategy should be developed in advance of the ICAN conference. This would address topics such as ICAN vision and aims, core and wider membership and an outline programme of activities for the year 2008-09 post-Copenhagen. This document would make it more explicit as to what the network is about, help maintain momentum and demonstrate the long term commitment of the network.
Action 6: VC/ND to draft a 2 page strategy statement. This will then be disseminated to the wider ICAN group and a teleconference will be arranged to discuss it.
Regarding funding, VC said that it is unlikely that ICAN will be funded to maintain a secretariat. We will probably have to continue to rely on funding for networking and exchange where possible. This would help to have specialist meeting, feedback on developments and the like. The IODE model where a small number of specialists are invited to a closed meeting may be worth looking at.
DW said that an NSF opportunity will be opening soon asking for proposals on Community-based Data Interoperability Networks (INTEROP), with a closing date of July23rd. This could help fund US participants for international travel and networking.
Action 7: DW to stay informed of NSF funding opportunity and co-ordinate a proposal.
VC said we need to maintain the European-US core to drive the ICAN agenda, whilst welcoming additional players from outside.
The work on the ontology demonstrator is nearing completion. Once this is complete feedback will be solicited from the wider ICAN group. A joint tech-funding teleconference was scheduled in the original post-Oregon agreement to discuss this feedback. The date for this (end March at latest) needs to be established dependent on demonstrator completion.
Action 8: ND to discuss with demonstrator developers and determine when a working version should be complete.
4. AOB
DW said that she had been requested by Idea Group Incorporated to make a proposal for a book in the coastal informatics area. Closing date is March 10th.
She said that the workshops could inform the contents of such a book. Also it could be conceived as a handbook on best-practise in Atlas design.
ND said that should we decide that contributing to such a book was a good idea it should not preclude writing articles for peer-reviewed journals. We just need to have different foci.
Action 9: DW to circulate details regarding call for book proposals and all to consider potential participation
ICAN FUNDING Group Conference Call #2
Friday, 16 November 2007, 8:30 a.m. Pacific / 4:30 p.m. Europe - ~20 minutes in duration
Hosted on Skype by Dawn Wright with participants:
Ned Dwyer
Ronan Uhel and Andruus Meiner
Tim Nyerges
John Helly (via Skype chat)
Very bad audio problems with Skype so call was ended prematurely
(1) Workshop Report and White Paper
Thanks to all who have contributed comments on the Workshop 2 Report
Deadline for any further feedback on Workshop 2 Report is now Friday, Nov. 30th - Report will then go through final printing and distribution
White paper a different story as that can be a much more flexible document that we can add to and edit as we see fit for funding opportunities as they arise.
As such, the call participants endorsed Ronan's idea of further fleshing out of the future direction section of the white paper, especially so as to make a more powerful case to funders on the real scope, objectives, and logistics of an ICAN
- the general notion of linking coastal atlases worldwide is a major idea with huge potential that needs to be drawn out a bit more, and allied issue of erosion very important, needs more elaboration
ACTION ITEM - Ronan, Tim (and John?) will communicate together to flesh future directions section of white paper a bit more and send text to Dawn for inclusion in white paper. Ned will stay in the loop as well on behalf of CMRC
(2) July 2008 Workshop
Ronan and Andruus still lined up to work with Val, Ned and Dawn on plans, including a pre-announcement
Additional input on white paper will be very beneficial toward this end, so we will revisit the workshop plans during the Nov. 23rd call.
(3) Additional Notes on Funding Opportunities
Marcia shared via prior email that she has been researching private foundations but hasn't found any opportunities yet. I asked her to investigate what may be a future marine opportunity from the Nippon Foundation in Japan
John shared via Skype chat:
"There are two interesting funding oppty's: 1 is NOPP for coastal effects, the other is a special NSF oppty specifically for wireless sensor networks and nanotechnology with Ireland.
8:50 AM
I'm thinking a pilot program of water quality/currents/??? in Ireland wirelessly interfaced back through the marine labs and into the Coastal Atlases in real and near-realtime.
8:51 AM
Make the coastal atlases really dynamic and referential."
Tim shared via a later Skype call:
NSF DataNet call and others that may be coming online soon from the Office of Cyberinfrastructure - CISE (Computer & Information Science & Engineering) directorate within NSF - 5 centers for figuring out how to make investments in large data libraries more sustainable - NSF can no longer support substantive library investments to continue that investment themselves - idea that we could propose for funding along the lines of semantically interoperable coastal data atlases as a digital library - linkages between U.S. Pacific northwest, San Diego Supercomputer Center (and it will be important to have a computer scientist such as John as a co-PI to assuage computer scientists on review panel), possibly to U.S. southeast via Luis at SURA (Southeastern Universities Research Association), and to Europe - so essentially an ICAN
ICAN FUNDING Group Conference Call #1
Tuesday, 2 October 2007, 8:30 a.m. Pacific / 11:30 a.m. Eastern / 4:30 p.m. Europe - 1 hour, 5 minutes in duration
Hosted on Skype by Liz O'Dea with participants:
Dawn Wright
Luis Bermudez
Val Cummins
Tanya Haddad
John Helly
Ronan Uhel
(1) Status and progress of the TECH group
- Tanya and Liz have put together controlled vocabularies for MIDA and OCA, related specifically to coastal erosion
- These were input to Protege
- Tech Group conf call on 12 September discussed challenge of great amount time necessary to put together such a list and the need to focus even more within the coastal erosion use case in order to have a tangible, successful demo
- new foci specifically on *coastal vulnerability and human response* - these include GIS data that are indeed resident in both MIDA and OCA
- Luis created a top (super) ontology listing coastal vulnerability and human response terms
- need to import terms into MIDA and OCA ontologies and then map those terms to see what is common between them
- Reference Liz's email to TECH list of this morning ([ICAN_Tech] Mapping ontology to super terms
October 2, 2007)
- "vulnerability" vs. "sensitivity," i.e., does vulnerability mean only physical condition of the coast or human response?
- Rather than substitute the term, how about splitting into two - we want the physical aspect but also the human values/asset aspects (cities, houses, valuable natural features such as parks, beaches, wetlands).
NOAA has used vulnerability in the sense of community vulnerability (e.g., www.csc.noaa.gov/products/nchaz/startup.htm or www.csc.noaa.gov/vata)
USGS web site from Woods Hole - national assessment of coastal vulnerability index - woodshole.er.usgs.gov/project-pages/cvi
- so we want to capture physical vulnerability and human vulnerability and then separately with that human response
- European Environment Agency glossary is useful too, from Ronan
EEA
Eurosion Portal
- CSW (catalog services for the web) in ISO - GeoNetwork - working on installing it locally for OCA - Tanya got to talk to some GeoNetwork people at a conference last week - has good base for installing it
- ongoing discussion of super terms
- mapping of terms to top terms will be key in guiding how much more detail and discussion needed
- have a look at IPCC reports where vulnerability is being discussed also - www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar with at least one relavant chapter on coastal vulnerability and resilience: www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg2/301.htm#662
- Liz has experience in mapping ontology terms - she will make first cut of mapping and send out version of super terms ontology, for all to follow up on and comment
- Reminder that our end game is a prototype using GeoNetwork with CSW - this includes an interface that will allow the user to search a controlled vocabulary, which produces a list and links to data sets with a web mapping services (WMS) environment - yes, Oregon and Ireland are far apart but this is a proof-of-concept 
- prototype will be ready in February - awesome Tech Team still on target
- Next TECH conference call pushed back to Wednesday, 10 October 8:30 a.m. Pacific / 4:30 p.m. Europe
(2) Status of white paper
- Funding group worked on separate sections in weeks after workshop and latest versions of these remain at http://workshop1.science.oregonstate.edu/ican
- assemble potentially integrated document - easier for all to comment and edit
- Dawn will circulate this integrated document by Friday to FUNDING for feedback - TECH will receive copy as well
- white paper to be completed by end of October so that we will have a working document to use in discussions with funding agencies (e.g., in tendering process), or to help us prepare proposals
(3) Status of workshop report
- still in progress and will be completed by October 30th. Dawn will take Stephanie up on her offer to help compose the section describing the mini-workshop within a workshop that was presented by Luis and Stephanie
- will use same format as Workshop 1 report to complete the set - Dawn has Liz's old MS-Word doc
(4) Report on upcoming funding opportunities
NSF - Dawn, Tim, John
- Dawn reported on NSF 07-577, 07-565, and 07-054.
07-565 on Community-based Data Interoperability Networks (INTEROP) with next target date of July 2008 sounds most realistic, as we will have prototype completed by then.
- John reported on 3 additional NSF calls (e.g., NSF 07-601), one including a maximum of $20 million over 5 years. This may be too much for ICAN to consider submitting to, but we might participate as a collaborating partner with a lead group. He will circulate these calls for us to contemplate along with
DHS - Tim?
EU/EEA - European Atlas of Seas - Ronan and Val - will participate in a discussion on that next week
UNESCO - John and Tim - emailing individuals at UNESCO (Charles and Fanny?)
Ford and Packard Foundations - Greg?
SeaChange, Irish EPA - Val and CMRC submitted to SeaChange, CMRC/OSU/DHI/USGS partners on Geoscientific Data Integration (GeoDI), which includes methodologies for semantic interoperability for geophysical data - lessons learned could be transferred to ICAN - will hear back hopefully before Christmas
NOAA - Dawn, Tim, Tony? Dawn has not heard of any NOAA opportunities
WWF - Marcia, Stephanie?
GEO/GEOSS - Ronan, John - email inquiry in progress to Gary Taylor, cc-ed Tony
LOICZ - Val, Dawn - Val will follow-up on LOICZ
(5) An initial look forward regarding the Denmark workshop
- still scheduled for week of 7 July 2008 - confirmation to go ahead received by Ronan from CMRC and OSU
- November to kick off preparations on workshop - an initial announcement, organize a small working group to think about the agenda and the invitees
- Ronan has lined up EEA staff to fuel this process in November
- Val and Ronan will lead on organizing European component - Dawn will organize discussion from U.S. side and with John assisting
- who to invite from other countries (S. Africa)?
- in addition, there will be a working meeting in Cork in November to explore how Ireland and other countries contribute to a strategic approach on a European Atlas of the seas - good reaction thus far
(6) Target date for next FUNDING telecon is Nov 15 or Nov 16 via Skype
- hosted by Dawn. Non-Skype users please supply Dawn with a regular phone number.