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It's called ArcCI (or Arctic CyberInfrastructure) and promises to combine the thousands of images taken over the years of the Arctic Ocean into a global database that will help scientists and the world to see Physical changes occur in the area, including ice loss. It is hoped that this Web repository will allow researchers to spend more time analyzing information than simply collecting and processing data.
"It's helping scientists to spend more time on science," says Professor Alberto Mestas-Nuñez, one of two researchers at the University of Texas at San Antonio, who works on the on-demand data mining module. "At the present time, there is no place on the Internet that provides all these data sets, but also an algorithm to extract the information," Mestas adds. "Most of the time, scientists spend time collecting and preparing data, and typically about 80% of the data is prepared and 20% devoted to science, and we want to break that paradigm."
The initial idea to build ArcCI was proposed by Professor Hongjie Xie, principal investigator of the project at UTSA and professor in the department of geological sciences of the university. Although large data analyzes and dashboards are widespread in many areas, the technology has not yet been fully applied to Arctic sea ice monitoring.
"We need to exploit the data revolution," says Xie. "It is important to learn more in order to navigate the new Arctic."
Xie and Xin Miao from Missouri State University started the project five years ago. The National Science Foundation has now given the go-ahead for the development of an online system using high-resolution imagery, obtained on-site, by satellite, or by airborne surveillance.
The system will allow the scientific community to easily obtain detailed information on various properties of the ice, including submerged ice, ice concentration, melt ponds or ice edge – the boundary between an ice zone and open sea. The on-demand database will be dynamic and will include new algorithms and additional datasets as they become available. Currently, the cloud-based system contains about one terabyte of images, but this number will certainly increase. The first data set dates from the 1998 Sheba expedition, which made 13 flights over the Beaufort Sea. Researchers will now include nearly 1760 declassified images.
"We will use the power of the image," says Xie about the large amount of declassified information that will be built into ArcCI.
Chaowei Yang, of George Mason University, is another researcher partner of the UTSA. A beta version of ArcCI will be presented at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union to be held in Washington DC in December 2018.
This on-demand service module to exploit the geophysical characteristics of the Arctic sea ice allows a wider circle of the scientific community to have an intelligent tool for conducting research in digital form. The project will also include summer workshops for educators so that they can enjoy them and that in turn they learn the new Arctic landscape to the next generation of scientists and scientists. # 39; children.
Source of the story:
Material provided by University of Texas at San Antonio. Original written by Milady Nazir. Note: Content can be changed for style and length.
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