Disciplinary Improvements: Accelerating Geoscience Discovery with Madrigal: HAPI+SPASE Integration for Transformative Open Science

Massachusetts Institute Of Technology, Cambridge MA

Investigators

Abstract

Today's frontier Heliophysics research topics require fusing data from multiple distinct sources in order to advance community knowledge. However, creating analysis-ready data from multiple data sources remains burdensome. A more uniform way to discover measurements ripe for synthesis, as well as a consistent and efficient method to subsequently obtain the data in a common analysis environment for the study in question, is urgently needed to produce future discoveries while following interoperable, reusable principles and open science practices. This project provides concrete, usable, and valuable progress by linking the NSF-sponsored Madrigal Database, responsible for storing and providing access to a vast variety of ground-based geoscience data, with two emerging tools for standardizing data access, organization, and metadata: (1) the Heliophysics Application Programming Interface (HAPI), a time series download service and a tool bundle; and (2) the Space Physics Archive Search and Extract (SPASE) data model. This project will integrate the NSF-funded Madrigal, the database for upper atmosphere science, with the Heliophysics Application Program Interface (HAPI) and Space Physics Archive Search and Extract (SPASE) model. The project will increase the Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable (FAIR) of the data and enable scientific discovery across a wide range of heliophysics with five major activities: 1) development of a Madrigal-HAPI server to serve Madrigal data via HAPI infrastructure, 2) development of a metadata converter between HAPI and SPASE, 3) development of a Madrigal-specific plugin to populate SPASE metadata, 4) research community engagement and training, and 5) quantitative assessment of the efficacy of newly developed tools. This award by the Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure in the Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering is jointly supported by the Directorate for Geosciences. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.