Brooke L. Hemming, Ph.D.

1
Networked Environmental Information System for
Global Emissions Inventories (NEISGEI)
Applying 21st Century Advances in Information
Technology to the Conversion of Environmental
Data into Scientific-, Management- and
Policy-Relevant Knowledge

• Brooke L. Hemming, Ph.D.
• US EPA/National Center for Environmental
  Assessment
• Stefan Falke, Ph.D.
• Washington University in St. Louis
• Terry Keating, Ph.D.
• US EPA/Office of Air and Radiation

2
Collaborative Science and Management Networks
Advances in information science and technology
are driving the trend toward distributed networks
and virtual communities for science and
management.

• Cyberinfrastructure
• NSFs initiative to apply new IT to building new
  ways of conducting collaborative research
  http//www.cise.nsf.gov/evnt/reports/toc.htm
• Earth Observation Summit
• International effort to build comprehensive,
  coordinated, and sustained Earth observation
  systems http//www.earthobservationsummit.gov
• Ecoinformatics
• EPAs vision for national and international
  cooperation in data and technology development
  http//oaspub.epa.gov/sor/user_conference.startup

Integrated Ocean Observing System International
network of ocean related monitoring, assessment,
and communication http//www.ocean.us/ Linked
Environments for Atmospheric Discovery Network
of high-performance computers and software to
gain new insights into weather
http//lead.ou.edu/ Virtual Observatory Network
for astronomical data sharing and distributed
analysis http//www.us-vo.org/
3
Emissions Community Collaborative Activities

• NIF Data standards
• Standard format and submission
• NEI XML schema
• Environmental Information Exchange Network
• Network linking EPA, States, and other partners
  through the Internet and standardized data
  formats
• Facility Registry System
• Standard facility codes and locations
• Data Sharing Efforts
• States, Tribes, Local agencies, RPOs
• North America

4
NEISGEI
Networked Environmental Information System for
Global Emissions Inventories

• is both a conceptual framework and
  implementation effort for the development of a
  fully integrated, distributed air emissions
  inventory and the foundation for an all-media
  environmental information network
• Tie together data at all spatial and temporal
  scales using emerging distributed database
  technologies
• Provide shared, online tools for processing and
  analysis
• Provide for the seamless merging, manipulation
  and analysis of any web-based -- and desk-top
  resident -- air quality-relevant data through the
  development of emerging Internet-oriented
  technologies
• Make use of existing resources link and partner
  with other efforts
• Build a broad-based air quality user community
  scientists, regulators, policy analysts and the
  public
• Create the network and toolkit piece-wise,
  allowing immediate functionality and value to the
  air quality community

5
CAREN The California Air Resources Network
Eduard Hovy, Jose-Luis Ambite, Andrew Philpot
USC Information Sciences Institute

• Environmental data sharing among international,
  national, state and local governments, the public
  and academic and other non-governmental research
  organizations is a difficult challenge.
• Barrier Technological incompatibilities
• Barrier Data format incompatibilities
• Barrier Financial (staff time) limitations

RPOs

• Our Solution Strategy (First Step)
• Automate the integration of heterogeneous
  databases

Use semi-automated information integration
methods to generate translation protocols between
related information sources, e.g. AQMD and CARB.
???
6
Integrated N. American Emission Inventory Demo
Co-investigator Greg Stella, Alpine Geophysics
Air pollutant emission inventories for the US,
Canada, and Mexico are compiled and stored using
different methods
The Commission on Environmental Cooperation (CEC)
and the US EPA are supporting a project to
develop a prototype web tool for demonstrating
uniform access to distributed emissions data from
North American electricity generating power
plants.

• Identify, collect, and review existing sources
  of electric generating utility emissions and
  activity databases, and provide a summary of the
  state-of-science
• Build and demonstrate a relational database and
  web browser tool to query, retrieve, and explore
  emissions data from these distributed databases.

7
Fire, Smoke, and Air Quality Network Pilot

• Access to distributed fire related data
• Graphical browsing and display
• Online analysis tools

8
Whats possible with NEISGEI ?

• Collaborative Air Quality Management
• Emerging air quality issues require cooperative
  efforts among multiple jurisdictions
• Sharing expertise across borders and agencies
  maximizes program success and cost effectiveness

• NEISGEI will provide a mechanism for
  collaborative work by providing
• A common, shared pool of data and tools
• A shared analytic tool set designed for
  interoperability
• Simple browsing through catalogs of emissions
  inventories, measurement data, modeling outputs
  and analysis tools
• An environment in which each participant
  contributes in their area of expertise and gains
  benefit from others.
• A virtual community gathering point

9
NEISGEI Community Objectives

• Gain new insights by combining skills, data, and
  tools from multiple participants
• Provide data access to a broader user base,
  including the public
• Identify data gaps at multiple spatial and
  temporal scales
• Enable simplified, multi-party, cross-border
  collaboration
• Provide environment for new collaborative
  analysis
• Improve data quality through extended use,
  verification and versioning control
• Build and share reusable components across the
  network

10
Ex. Emissions Community Resource of Data Tools
Users Projects
Data Catalogs
Data
Geospatial One-Stop
Wrappers
XML
Emissions Inventory Catalog
Comparison of Emissions Methods
RDBMS
Data Analysis
NEI
NEON
Web Tools/Services
Activity Data
Model Development
Spatial Allocation
GIS
Emissions Factors
Estimation Methods
Transport Models
Surrogates
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• See our website for the latest information about
  the progress of NEISGEI
• http//www.neisgei.org