Now available for download the new version (0.6-Beta) of Joque.

Check it out at www.seismicportal.eu/jetspeed/portal/web-services.psml#ClientTools

Clients and tools now available for download at the portal webservices page

The NERIES project data portal provides a single point of access to diverse, distributed European datasets. The first official release is now available for use at http://www.seismicportal.eu <http://www.seismicportal.eu/>  

The Earthquake Data Portal portal is a joint EMSC-ORFEUS development. It provides tools to explore and download earthquake information, broadband and accelerometric waveforms, as well as providing access to other NERIES project datasets as they become available.  We would like for you to come try out, and we welcome your feedback.

 
Please note that to use all the portal features, you must register and log in.

 

- The NERIES Portal Development Team

In the last weeks we`ve been working on several back end and front end features.

Back End: Optimization of the users` waveform requests management

We have adopted ActiveMQ as our requests message broker. We foresee this as one the core tools to centralize and schedule all the incoming waveform requests at the ODC, that will be routed transparently to the nodes of the ArcLink network.

We aim to extend this system to serve not only the portal but also other client tools, eg Breqfast.

Front End: Dataset Rating

Through the NERIES portal and cyberinfrastructure, the users of the portal can search for eartquakes and waveform by aggreagating in a transparent way information coming from different and multi domain data providers, having access to a big amount of seismic stations (c.a. 600 at this early stage) available through the ArcLink network

The adoption of Web 2.0 technologies such as webservices, RDF, and feeds coupled with Ajax and interactive maps, gave us the possibility to search, combining and mashup the seismic information that are distributed over the internet

Each user can compose his own dataset , combining together earthquake parameters, station information, phases arrival times in a completely dynamic way, thus exempting the providers from "guessing", processing and then offering, pre-packed datasets.

The datasets are basically created on demand from the users themselves.

In order to improve our services we have implemented an easy to use rating system which will help us in tracking back how users search for data, giving them the possibility to provide a quality evaluation on the obtained dataset. A negative feedback will be notified to the organisation providing the data which compose the user`s dataset, whilst all the positive ones will be used to create a collection of user composed datasets and metadata that will be made available to the users either through the NERIES Data Portal or through RSS feeds.

Please, find below the screenshot of the requests detail page hosting the Rating functionality

All comments and ideas on how we could improve this service are more than welcome!!

After the 6th-7th November - brainstorm session in Edinburgh, besides many long term ideas for new tools and collaborations, we also got several requirements from the group of users attending the meeting.

NESC brainstorming presentations

One requirement was to give to the users the possibility to reload a set of waveform requests previously submitted through the Waveform Explorer. We have been working on this during the last week and a first version of this funcionality has been published in our prototype.

Every request listed into the Waveform Cart can be automatically reopened within the Waveform Explorer and modified, either adding new events or stations, or changing the time period of a Time Mode Request

We are planning to include also a simple text editor which allows the users to edit and submit an XML file which represents the waveform request, but there are some specs details to take into account first.

Please follow this link to watch a demo video

A poster of the NERIES Data Portal will be presented at the next AGU Tuesday 16th December 1340h

http://www.agu.org/meetings/fm08/fm08-sessions/fm08_IN23B.html

and demo session will follow on Thursday afternooon in a booth already reserved for a couple of hours

Edinburgh (UK), 6-7 November 2008

The Research Infrastructure project NERIES is developing a comprehensive portal providing access to a wide variety of earthquake seismological data in Europe and its surroundings. An α-version, mering parametric data from the EMSC with waveform data from the European Integrated Distributed Archive (EIDA) is currently beign tested by a selected users group. At this stage the NERIES development team is planning the next development steps of the portal, which should include different data and application tools. For this purpose the NERIES team joined forces with IT-specialists from the University of Edingburgh (The UK National e-Science Centre, School of Informatics and EPCC coordinating the ADMIRE project for data mining and integration) to organise a brainstorming meeting. The Edingburgh e-Science Institute will host this meeting.

Goal brainstorming session
Promote a discussion between IT-specialists, seismologists (academics, students, observatories, software developers) and the NERIES developments team to map the needs and technical possibilities for an innovative useful European-scale web-service for seismological earthquake data. The outcome is expected to be two-fold:

1. A short-term program with a number of proposals for specific web applications. After the meeting these will be worked out with the NERIES developments team in collaboration with IT specialists into a concrete workplan for implementation into the NERIES portal.
2. A long-term strategy for user friendly portal developments integrating relevant IT developments and seismological software tools.

Limited financial supports is available for non-NERIES participants.

Prospective participants
We expect participation from experienced seismologists and earth scientists using seismological earthquake data, students in seismology and IT and NERIES activity leaders and participants. We aim at a meeting with a maximum of 40-50 participants.

Brainstorming meeting preparations
Submitting ideas for portal developments: members of the seismological community are encouraged to submit a proposal for a new web service. We particularly encourage Master and PhD students in earth sciences to submit proposals of innovative services to access and process earthquake seismological data. These proposals will be made publicly accessible on the NERIES web pages and distributed to the meeting participants.

Registration (and practicalities)
The registration form and specific meeting details can be found on: http://www.nesc.ac.uk/esi/events/920/ (UK National e-Science Center).

Deadline
30 October 2008: registration deadline

The organisers
NERIES - EC I3 project 'Network of Research Infrastructures for European Seismology'
ADMIRE - EC Theme ICT project 'Advanced Data Mining and Integration Research for Europe'
ORFEUS - Observatories and Research Facilities for European Seismology
EMSC - European-Mediterranean Seismological Center
EPCC - University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre
NESC - University of Edinburgh, Research Group of the UK national e-Science Centre

We are happy to announce the opening of the NERIES community`s Blog for the Seismic Data Portal.

Here we`ll provide all the latest news about the ongoing developments and future plans related to the NERIES Seismic Data Portal, with the main goal to establish a better, open and more interactive communication between the communities of users and developers of the services and tools that will be available through the Portal.

Get our RSS news feed here!

Sincerely

The NERIES Seismic Data Portal development team