Community Presence - May 2007

MMI provided a proposal to support vocabulary mapping needs for IOOS and other ocean observing systems, and is awaiting a response from some potential funders. Although a positive reception was expected, it is not clear that funds can be made available. Various alternatives in scope, funding, and schedule are being considered.

MMI provided an endorsement letter to the eGY Declaration, and asked for identification of our endorsement in their next newsletter. MMI intends to prepare an interoperability 'demonstration' for eGY as well.

MMI has also submitted an application for partnership in ESIP, the Federation of Earth Science Information Partners.

Recently but especially in the past 6 weeks, Luis and John have been engaged in various discussions about metadata and services for the oceanographic community. Topics have included URN (uniform resource name) resolvers, UID (unique identifier) services, vocabulary and sensor registries, vocabulary and ontology servers, and ontology services. Many of these services are made necessary by standards nearing approval, and others would have been useful in previous years, but the number of potential users is rapidly increasing. Many of the services will be needed for applications like OOSTethys, or to demonstrate the value of MMI approaches to the scientific community.

Many of those with whom we have interacted on these topics have encouraged MMI to take a leadership role in providing services. There is some indication that community collaboration will increase if MMI does so. As a result, this topic will be discussed in this month's Steering Committee meeting.

NSF released a solicitation for community networks that is extremely well suited for many MMI activities. MMI will almost certainly want to respond with at least one proposal.