IEEE Committee on Earth Observation Standards Working Group (ISWG) is recruiting volunteers to build GEOSS
By Maeve Hickok, posted on May 21st, 2009 in Articles, Earth Observation, GEOSS/ICEO News
Imagine a world where adoption of uniform standards for all manner of Earth observation systems and services made universal interoperability the rule, not the exception.
That world is one of the major goals of the IEEE Committee on Earth Observation Standards Working Group (ISWG), which is helping the intergovernmental Group on Earth Observation (GEO) to build GEOSS, the Global Earth Observation System of Systems.
The IEEE, represented by the IEEE Committee on Earth Observation (ICEO), is a member of GEO and contributes to many of its committees and tasks.
Dr. Siri Jodha Khalsa, the co-chair of the GEO Standards and Interoperability Forum, puts it this way: “The success of GEOSS will be measured by two things: improved access to the world’s Earth observation resources and the ability to combine, verify and analyze the data coming from those resources. Both critically depend on the adoption of open, international standards and best practices.”
To accomplish this goal, the international community of volunteers who comprise ISWG has been meeting regularly since May 2005, and in recent years through bi-weekly conference calls that last about an hour. The volunteers take on tasks as their schedules allow. ICEO recently issued a report on its accomplishments. As it moves forward, ICEO has a call for volunteers to participate as a team of experts to establish best practices for the taxonomies and ontologism of Earth Observation.
“Many of the issues faced by society are global or multinational, whether climate change or water availability or others. This requires information to be accessible and understandable beyond national boundaries. A key to true global collaboration is having common definitions and developing information in a consistent manner through best practices,” says Dr. Jay Pearlman, Chair of ICEO. “Having broad volunteer participation from all the regions of the world to develop a common “dictionary” is a high priority for creating the societal impacts envisioned for GEOSS.”
Steve Holt, a volunteer member of the ISWG, notes that further information about the tasks and accomplishments of ISWG is contained in “The IEEE Committee on Earth Observation Standards Working Group (ISWG) Quarterly Report.” [linked here] or available online at: https://www.ieeecommunities.org/iswg. You can then register for an IEEE web account to gain access to the ISWG site. If you wish to participate in the ISWG’s support of GEOSS, please send an email to iceovolunteers@ieee.org. If you wish to look at the volunteer opportunities available with other ICEO groups, you can go to http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pGX1aV73g-bINoHP3N__qew.
NASA Daily Image
Remnant of a Supernova
Vital clues about the devastating ends to the lives of massive stars can be found by studying the aftermath of their explosions. In its more than twelve years of science operations, NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory has studied many of these supernova remnants sprinkled across the galaxy. The latest example of this important investigation is Chandra's new image of the supernova remnant known as G350.1-0.3. This stellar debris field is located some 14,700 light years from the Earth toward the center of the Milky Way. Evidence from Chandra and from ESA's XMM-Newton telescope suggest that a compact object within G350.1+0.3 may be the dense core of the star that exploded. The position of this likely neutron star, seen by the arrow pointing to "neutron star" in the inset image, is well away from the center of the X-ray emission. If the supernova explosion occurred near the center of the X-ray emission then the neutron star must have received a powerful kick in the supernova explosion. Data suggest this supernova remnant, as it appears in the image, is 600 and 1,200 years old. If the estimated location of the explosion is correct, this means the neutron star has been moving at a speed of at least 3 million miles per hour since the explosion. Another intriguing aspect of G350.1-0.3 is its unusual shape. Many supernova remnants are nearly circular, but G350.1-0.3 is strikingly asymmetrical as seen in the Chandra data in this image (gold). Infrared data from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope (light blue) also trace the morphology found by Chandra. Astronomers think that this bizarre shape is due to stellar debris field expanding into a nearby cloud of cold molecular gas. The age of 600-1,200 years puts the explosion that created G350.1-0.3 in the same time frame as other famous supernovas that formed the Crab and SN 1006 supernova remnants. However, it is unlikely that anyone on Earth would have seen the explosion because of the obscuring gas and dust that lies along our line of sight to the remnant. These results appeared in the April 10, 2011 issue of The Astrophysical Journal. Image Credits: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO/I. Lovchinsky et al; IR: NASA/JPL-Caltech