The poster session Thursday evening was an exceptionally productive event for the YES Network. AGI's poster "Social Technologies to Jumpstart Geoscience Careers" poster outlined examples of effective use of Web2.0 technologies to connect with young and early-career geoscientists and provide them with forums and inforamtational resources about the geoscience profession. The poster highlighted AGI's GeoConnection resources as well as the YES Network.
Discussions pertaining to the AGI poster as well as other posters in the session (International Geoscience Informatics Partnerships, Projects, and Collaboration Technologies) revealed several resources that could be used in existing YES Network projects, and opportunities for the development of future resources. I'll highlight some of the key discussions and posters to get the brainstorming process going among YES Network members.
SpecBase: A Virtual Research Environment for Hyperspectral Remote Sensing - Jens Klump and Sören-Nils Haubrock.
Jens and I disucssed his Virtual Research Environment idea which is portable and uses different technologies to share data, provide input to a virtual lab notebook, and document creation and dissemination. Although the poster focused on remote sensing data, the concept could potentially be portable to other types of research questions and data sets. Given the globally distributed membership of the YES Network, this virtual research environment concept would be great to test and use in future YES Network projects.
Citizen Seismology: Involving the Citizens for Rapid Earthquake Assessment - Rémy Bossu, Sébastien Gilles, Gilles Mazet-Roux, Linus Kamb, and Laurent Frobert.
This is a very innovative project in which users can provide eyewitness data about earthquakes by logging into the CSEM-EMSC website to find out information about the earthquake they just felt and by providing information on a web-questionairre (which is available in 27 languages). This group is currently deploying and testing its new ShakeMapple application which captures ground movement via a motion sensor application that can be downloaded and installed in laptop computers. EMSC's earthquake website attracts approximatley 1 million visitors per month and the project has produced some innovative ways to map earthquake damage (such as recording the number of web-session closures when earthquakes hit an area). The project will be updating its website this summer and also will be developing a dedicate website for smartphones. I know the YES Network is developing a project regarding earthquake mitigation strategies, and this application may be a resource for those involved in this YES Network project. Also, a similar project in the US is the USGS's "Did You Feel It?" earthquake monitoring program. In related news, the European Seismological Commission 32nd General Assembly will be held 06-10 September 2010 in Montpelier, France. For more information, visit: http://www.esc2010.
GIRAF (Geoscience InfoRmation in AFrica) is a geoscience initiative whose aim is to support the building of a pan-African geoscience information knowledge network by sharing geoscience information knowledge and best practices across political boundaries. I spoke with Kristine Asch (who also gave a talk at the YES OneGeology roundtable session) and Colin Reeves about this project and other geospatial initiatives that they are working on in Africa. GIRAF aims to address the challenges in education, hazard mitigation, sustainable resource management, and climate change research and mitigation through the use of applied geosciences. YES Network's African National Chapters would be an asset to this project, and Kristine is very interested in discussing how GIRAF and the YES Network could collaborate on this project. Also, the second GIRAF Workshop will be organised in 2011 and take place at SEAMIC in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania. To keep up to date on what's going on with GIRAF, you can check on their new blog.
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