Project Blog

Progress Post Type: endUser
Jisc Tags: userCase;rapidInnovation;VRERI;JISC;BlogMyData
The project team (thanks Andy and Adit) have got a first end-to-end prototype of the BlogMyData system up and running, with basic capabilities for the user to log in and to blog about map images on the Godiva2 site. So I visited Dan Hodson of NCAS-Climate to demonstrate the system and elicit some feedback.

I went prepared, having met Dan before and worked out which dataset would be a good candidate to show off the new system. We chose a set of monthly means of temperature, salinity and density (key parameters in ocean dynamics) from HiGEM, a state-of-the-art high-resolution climate model. With this dataset loaded up on our test site (having done some extra technical work to correct some metadata headers in the data files), we chatted informally about how the system works, and how it ought to work from Dan's point of view.

Here are the key points of Dan's feedback:

• Dan found it very useful to be able to explore the HiGEM data in the interactive way that Godiva2 allows. For him, it's among the easiest ways to visually get to grips with what's going on with the data.


• But this project is really all about the blogging and collaborative aspects, in which we have a classic chicken-and-egg situation: it's only useful once there's enough information on the blog to make it worthwhile. Therefore we discussed targeting the system to a particular collaboration between Dan and colleagues at the Met Office: the capability to discuss the model over the web could be very useful to help distributed colleagues work together asynchronously. This specific collaboration will hopefully seed the blog with useful information that others can discover.


• The privacy controls are welcome and important: without these scientists would be very reluctant to share their thoughts.


• Although it's nice to be able to blog about static map images, Dan would find it very useful to be able to create animations using Godiva2 and record them in blog posts (and comment about them of course). The development of this capability is now being pushed up the priority list.


• Godiva2's ability to display data in polar coordinates (and to animate in these coordinates) is particularly useful, and timely given Dan's team's upcoming focus on the Arctic. Therefore we need to make sure that polar coordinates are handled correctly within the whole system; this can be tricky, since most "geo-webby" tools use latitude-longitude coordinates, which are not very suitable in high latitudes.

Finally, here's a screenshot of a sample blog entry we generated during the session showing some HiGEM data near the poles: