Milestones
06/2020 - The ARMAP/AOV Team is helping to start up a new collaborative effort, the Polar Observing Assets Working Group (POAwg), under the SAON Committee on Observations and Networks (CON). Bill Manley will be a co-chair, along with Roberta Pirazzini from INTAROS. A core group is currently scoping goals and tasks, and it is expected that the first full meeting will be in September. To learn more, see the POAwg poster presented at AOS 2020 as well as a related white paper.
05/2020 - The AOV 3D Viewer has been formally launched with refinements such as: custom navigation, multiple high-res. basemaps, and advanced visualization as well as improvements to Help, the Time Slider, and more. This is a massive step forward for the user experience. Please take a look (by clicking on “Launch Viewer” from the Home page) and let us know what you think.
05/2020 - The team assisted with a session at the EGU General Assembly 2020. Bill Manley was a co-convener of "Arctic Observations: Data Collection, Management, and User Engagement".
05/2020 - ARMAP and AOV brought back an ISO metadata specialist for 2020. Ted Habermann, with Metadata Game Changers, will bring valuable expertise to again help the team better implement interoperability through use of the ISO 19115 standard for research projects and observing sites.
04/2020 - The AOV database continues to grow; the Viewer now has over 35,000 observing sites across 37 networks. Recently added through established endpoints are stations from NOAA’s National Weather Service, Alaska Aviation Weather Unit, as well as hundreds of USDA SNOTEL stations across Alaska and Canada.
04/2020 - The ARMAP/AOV Team is working on streamlining and improving the backend databases and workflows. Improvements might not be obvious in the frontend Viewers but will reduce ongoing efforts, increase performance, and enable new functionalities.
03/2020 - The ARMAP/AOV Team presented and participated in the Arctic Observing Summit 2020, with a poster on the apps -- as well as a poster and white paper on a new collaborative effort.
03/2020 - The team attended the virtual ESRI Developer Summit, extending skillsets for our graduate student developers.
02/2020 - The team continues to participate in various planning and coordination efforts, including the IARPC Arctic Observing and Arctic Data Subteams, the IASC/SAON Arctic Data Committee, and federated search & semantics working groups.
01/2020 - A new, prototype 3D Viewer is under development for AOV. Get a glimpse of substantial improvements to come in a sneak peak screenshot.
12/2019 - The ARMAP/AOV Team presented a poster at the 2019 Fall AGU meeting.
11/2019 - The ARMAP/AOV Team presented at the Third Polar Data Forum and participated in hackathons for semantics and federated search.
11/2019 - The team has recommended formation of an "Interoperable Network Description Working Group", as described in our white paper for the upcoming Arctic Observing Summit 2020, entitled "Optimizing Arctic Observing Through Interoperable Information Sharing Across Networks". This new working group might be established under an international coordinating body, the Sustaining Arctic Observing Networks (SAON) initiative. Please let us know if you have any feedback on this as it moves forward in the near future.
10/2019 - The ARMAP/AOV Team is exploring options for displaying near real-time ship tracks and positions in the Viewers, through subscriptions for AIS feeds with some additional coding. A particular focus for the near future is to display information for the Polarstern, which is currently locked in Arctic sea ice as part of the MOSAiC expedition.
09/2019 - The ARMAP/AOV Team gave a presentation to numerous NSF Program Officers.
09/2019 - The AOV Team is furthering collaboration with the International Arctic Buoy Programme (IABP).
09/2019 - The ARMAP/AOV Team presented at the Arctic Futures 2050 Conference.
08/2019 - Over 6000 sites have been added to the AOV Viewer across multiple networks, including more from NEON and NASA ABoVE, as well as buoys from the O-buoy project, CRREL-DMBBP, and WHOI. The AOV Viewer now has over 32,000 observing sites – doubled over the last year!
07/2019 - Based on user feedback, we have added a map layer for 24 stations from the Network for the Detection of Atmospheric Composition Change (NDACC), helping broaden AOV with inclusion of this important global initiative.
06/2019 - The team has continued collaboration with the Arctic Landscape Conservation Cooperative (ArcticLCC), this time specifically to pull observing sites from a JSON feed from the Umiq database for inclusion in AOV.
06/2019 - The team gave a presentation to the IARPC Field Operations Working Group, entitled "Apps for Arctic Science Planning: ARMAP & AOV", also summarizing similar portals, as well as the challenges and opportunities for giving such resources a more comprehensive perspective (at both multiagency and international levels) to better assess status, coordinate logistics, find overlap or shared assets, fill gaps, and clarify directions.
05/2019 - Through additional data wrangling and new collaborations, the AOV database is expanding rapidly! Over 7,000 new sites have been added across multiple networks, especially with yet more from NEON and some from NDACC. In concert, many existing records were QC'd to improve database content. The AOV Viewer now has over 26,000 observing sites!
05/2019 - The team has participated in discussions toward what may become a revitalized Alaska Data Integration Working Group (ADIwg).
05/2019 - Additional ship tracks were added to the Viewer, including 2018 tracks for the Healy, Louis S. St-Laurent, Oden, Sikuliaq, and Sir Wilfrid Laurier.
04/2019 - The team gave a presentation to the IARPC Arctic Data Subteam, entitled "Metadata Interoperability beyond the Dataset Level – for Networks, Projects, Observing Sites, Etc.".
03/2019 - The team communicated with INTAROS with discussion of potential collaboration toward common goals.
02/2019 - The team has continued to collaborate with spinoff working groups focused on particular challenges for the Arctic Data community, including the Polar Federated Search Working Group (POLDER) and the ADC-IARPC Vocabularies and Semantics Working Group, working toward white papers, completion of "the matrix", and substantive improvements to information sharing and interoperability.
02/2019 - The team continues to participate in various IARPC teams, particularly the Arctic Observing Systems Subteam and Arctic Data Subteam.
01/2019 - The ARMAP/AOV Team has begun to collaborate with the Toolik Field Station, particularly with their team on GIS and Remote Sensing, toward compatible means of sharing project-level and asset-level metadata. Some of the documentation on interoperability that we've released has helped them expand their own databases. They, like other portals and organizations, have begun to access and incorporate information through our public-facing web services. Plans are underway to include more detailed site-level information for the Toolik area in our Viewers.
12/2018 - The AOV Team presented a poster at the 2018 Fall AGU meeting. View the abstract.
12/2018 - The team participated in the AOS Observing System Implementation and Optimization Working Meeting that immediately preceded the Fall AGU meeting.
12/2018 - Over 4,000 new sites have been added to AOV across multiple networks, especially NEON.
11/2018 - The team gave a lightning talk at the Polar Data and Systems Architecture Workshop.
11/2018 - An alert system has been established to detect unexpected server downtime, improving reliability of our web services and Viewer.
11/2018 - NEON has become a Partner. A fruitful collaboration has added thousands of sites to AOV via their JSON API. We are working on adding thousands more, and to further refine harmonization of their site-level metadata.
11/2018 - The Viewer now has an additional filter — “NSF AON?” — to quickly identify >10,000 sites funded through the NSF Arctic Observing Network.
11/2018 - A total of 491 new sites have been added to AOV across four networks: NEON, NASA ABoVE, and IABP. Also, backfilling and normalizing was accomplished for existing site records in the database, as part of an ongoing QC effort to improve Search and the overall user experience.
10/2018 - A new AOV Map Gallery page has been created, with summary maps that can be easily downloaded for presentations etc. Please let us know if you'd like to see other maps featured there.
10/2018 - Our database and Viewer have shifted to new servers for better speed and stability. At no cost to the project, we have moved away from an aging systems architecture to a cloud-based solution offered by the University of Texas El Paso. There will be less effort spent by the Team on server maintenance, and users will benefit from better performance overall.
10/2018 - The Team continues to contribute to various planning and coordination activities, including the IARPC Arctic Observing and Arctic Data subteams, the IASC/SAON Arctic Data Committee, and related working groups focused on federated search, semantics, and data interoperability, with direct and indirect benefits to ARMAP and AOV.
09/2018 - An article in Nature Ecology & Evolution, which cites ARMAP, highlights the need for strategic inventories such as ARMAP and AOV to better assess gaps and avoid sampling biases in Arctic Observing.
09/2018 - New observing sites were added to the Viewer for the Beaufort Lagoon Ecosystems LTER, as well as all Arctic stations within NOAA's U.S. Climate Reference Network (USCRN). Also, backfilling and normalizing was accomplished for existing site records in the database, as part of an ongoing QC effort to improve the user experience.
09/2018 - The AOV Team gave a demo to the North Pacific Research Board (NPRB) and will explore options for collaboration.
09/2018 - The AOV Team has ramped up collaboration with NOAA across multiple fronts, with demos and progress toward inclusion of additional sites from several NOAA networks.
09/2018 - More than 200 new observing sites have been added to AOV in the latest refresh, with additional buoys and moorings across multiple networks: IABP, DBO, BGEP, NOAA NDBC, NOAA EcoFOCI, and NOAA AOP. Many of these networks are new to AOV.
08/2018 - The AOV Team has started collaboration with NEON to get all of their sites into the Viewer by harvesting from their web service.
08/2018 – ARMAP and AOV continue to prepare the next generation of innovators through cyberinfrastructure training for graduate students. Lead developer Ari Kassin, PhD Comp. Sci., will further his career as a GIS Analyst and Database Programmer with the City of El Paso. Mauricio Barba, MSc Elect. & Comp. Eng., has stepped into the lead programming role.
08/2018 - The AOV Team has continued to work closely with Isaaffik on interoperability and information exchange.
07/2018 - A big update was made with additional sites for the EarthScope IRIS network.
07/2018 - The “Observatories and Stations” map layers have been greatly expanded to highlight facilities including YOPP, NEON, LTER, an all encompassing “Arctic Research Stations” layer, and a revamped “US Logistics Hubs” layer.
06/2018 – More than 1800 new observing sites have been added to AOV across multiple networks: NEON, YOPP, GLISN, GNET, EarthScope, LTER, RUSALCA, NASA ABoVE, and more. AOV now contains almost 16,000 data collection sites with related details to better assist network planning and Arctic observing.
06/2018 – The AOV Team participated in the Arctic Observing Summit 2018.
06/2018 – A new set of overview slides about ARMAP and AOV has been posted to the website. Take a look!
06/2018 – To assist with sharing of project-level information, an ARMAP Data Dictionary has been released on the AOV Interoperability page, with a listing of relevant fields and their definitions, etc. Also, the project-level ISO template XML was updated slightly.
05/2018 – Team member Ted Habermann has published an article in a special issue of the journal Geosciences about metadata interoperability, with a focus on the distributed and hierarchical metadata web services for ARMAP and AOV.
05/2018 – The AOV Team participated in the Polar Data Planning Summit.
05/2018 – The AOV Team has submitted an abstract and will present a poster at the Arctic Observing Summit 2018.
05/2018 – A new and improved AOV Viewer has been launched! In particular, the Viewer is five times faster. Our student developers were able to harness server-side processing through .NET, overcoming speed limitations imposed by >13,000 points and enabling us to again add more networks and sites. In addition, the Filter tool is more intuitive, and refinements were made to the Draw and Measure tools, site popups, Save Excel tool, Splash Screens, Time Slider, and Tour Slides. The old Viewer has been retired, and the new one will be officially announced after a few more tweaks. If you haven't tried the Viewer in a while, please give it a spin.
05/2018 – After some app downtime recently, steps have been taken to avoid automated server restarts. Apologies. The Viewer should be more stable now.
05/2018 – The AOV Viewer displays new map layers to assist with logistics and coordination: US Logistics Hubs, Arctic Research Stations, YOPP Supersites, GNET Stations, and GLISN Stations.
05/2018 – The observing sites in AOV are now available as public-facing web services in a variety of formats (WMS, WFS, TXT, KMZ, ArcGIS, ...) to promote open data sharing and for other organizations to incorporate in their own databases and applications. Check out the new Web Services page and let us know what you think!
05/2018 – As a contribution toward further data sharing and interoperability within the Arctic data community, our Guide to Interoperability includes new annotated ISO XML templates as well as live use case XML's. These documents can assist other organizations with implementation of interoperable metadata in ISO format.
03/2018 – AOV Postdoc Sandra Villarreal will further her career as Project Manager at the Gulf South Research Corporation (GSRC).
02/2018 – The ARMAP Team has begun collaboration with Isaaffik, an app for facilitating scientific collaboration in Greenland, including exchange of metadata records for stations and monitoring sites.
01/2018 – Robbie Score has retired. Thank you for your dedication and innumerable contributions!! Naomi Whitty has joined the team as our able and fearless coordinator.
12/2017 – The AOV Team presented a poster at the 2017 Fall AGU meeting.
11/2017 – Several web usability sessions were conducted with key stakeholders to provide feedback on our new prototype viewer. Many thanks to those that participated!
11/2017 – A new prototype Viewer has been released, with much improved Search and Filter tools. Please try it out and let us know your thoughts.
11/2017 – AOV has been updated to provide hundreds of new sites. Furthermore, many site details – such as Initiative and much more – have been “backfilled” to be better provide more complete information for all sites.
09/2017 – The AOV Team gave a presentation on both AOV and ARMAP to the IARPC Arctic Research Support and Logistics Working Group.
06/2017 – Work has begun in earnest on a new AOV Viewer with various refinements.
05/2017 – The AOV Team gave a presentation to the IARPC AOSST about brainstorming an inventory of networks.
05/2017 - The AOV Team is collaborating with WMO and GCW on interoperability with the WMO WIGOS metadata standard, as well as the possibility of including a set of WMO sites in AOV.
04/2017 - The ARMAP Team has begun collaboration with the NSF Arctic Data Center toward information exchange and improved interoperability.
03/2017 - The ARMAP Team is participating in the revamped IARPC teams for Arctic Data, Arctic Observing Systems, and Environmental Intelligence.
02/2017 - The AOV Team has continued collaboration with the IASC/SAON Arctic Data Committee.
12/2016 - AOV has been updated to provide over 13,000 collection sites with hundreds of new sites for NSF AON, IABP, ITEX, and other networks.
12/2016 - An abstract, poster, and demos were given at the Fall AGU meeting: “The Arctic Observing Viewer (AOV): Visualization, Data Discovery, Strategic Assessment, and Decision Support for Arctic Observing”.
11/2016 - The AOV Team participated in the Polar Connections Interoperability Workshop, with a talk on the project-data life cycle and overview of data discovery and metadata.
10/2016 - Our Guide to Interoperability has been updated -- with new use cases, template ISO XML’s, a template spreadsheet, pick lists, and a data dictionary -- to better demonstrate our hierarchical and distributed approach to metadata sharing.
10/2016 - Numerous improvements have been made to the AOV Database, incorporating new details and keywords, as well as hundreds of new data collection sites for NSF AON, ITEX, and other networks.
10/2016 - The AOV Team continues to participate in coordination through the IARPC Arctic Data Collaboration Team as well as the IASC/SAON Arctic Data Committee.
10/2016 - Our older flash-based viewer has been retired, and our prototype Viewer with a clean and modern interface has been officially launched.
09/2016 - The AOV Team has further collaborated with the PermaData project (involving GTN-P, the Arctic Portal, and NSIDC) toward improved interoperability of information related to permafrost boreholes and more.
09/2016 - AOV releases a Guide to Interoperability, with examples of how to implement ISO metadata and hierarchical web services to benefit the Arctic Observing community.
09/2016 - A poster on AOV, ARMAP, and the Project-Data life cycle was presented at SciDataCon 2016.
09/2016 - Collaboration with ADIwg continues with adoption of ISO 19115-3 for data collection sites.
08/2016 - Many additional drifting buoys from the International Arctic Buoy Programme (IABP) have been added.
07/2016 - Legacy information has been added for sites from the International Tundra Experiment (ITEX).
07/2016 - A presentation on AOV and ARMAP was given to the IARPC Arctic Observing Systems Collaboration Team.
03/2016 - The website was refreshed with many new details in the "Data Collection Sites in AOV" section on the About page, as well as a new data contribution spreadsheet on the Collaborate page.
03/2016 - An abstract and poster were presented at the 2016 Arctic Observing Summit.
12/2015 - An abstract and poster were presented at the 2015 Fall AGU Meeting.
11/2015 - An abstract and poster were presented at the 2015 Arctic Observing Open Science Meeting.
10/2015 - An abstract and poster were presented at the Polar Data Forum II. The poster won first place!
10/2015 - A presentation on ARMAP and AOV was given to the IASC/SAON Arctic Data Committee.
10/2015 - A new AOV Viewer is released with a clean, fast, and modern interface. This prototype app — based on HTML5, javascript, and hierarchical ISO metadata — includes an advanced Search tool, and is mobile friendly while being intuitive and more informative. Try it out, and let us know what you think!
10/2015 - An abstract has been submitted for the Arctic Observing Summit 2016.
10/2015 - An abstract has been submitted for the 2015 Arctic Observing Open Science Meeting.
09/2015 - NASA ABoVE became a Partner.
09/2015 - Progress has been made with community-based ISO standards, and with AOV’s implementation of hierarchical metadata, such that project-level information is linked to details on data collection sites, and vice versa.
08/2015 - A new AOV Viewer is nearing completion to deliver improvements in functionality with a clean, fast, and modern interface. A prototype will be released before the Fall AGU, and will undergo usability testing prior to formal launch. Using HTML5, javascript, and hierarchical ISO metadata, the new Viewer will be mobile friendly, intuitive, and informative.
08/2015 - An abstract has been submitted for the Fall AGU Meeting.
07/2015 - More data collection sites were added, existing sites went through additional quality control, additional ship tracks were added, and improvements were made to the application interface.
05/2015 - A peer-reviewed journal article about AOV has been published in the journal Arctic.
04/2015 - Collaboration continues with the SAON/IASC Arctic Data Committee (ADC), and has begun with SAON's new Committee on Observations and Networks (CON).
03/2015 - GTN-P became a Partner.
03/2015 - Collaboration picks up speed with NSIDC on the PermaData project, with planning and information exchange related to permafrost datasets, boreholes in the GTN-P network, and other data collection sites.
03/2015 - Collaboration has begun with the IARPC Arctic Data Collaboration Team.
01/2015 - Collaboration has begun with the NASA Arctic-Boreal Vulnerability Experiment (ABoVE) toward interoperability and information exchange.
12/2014 - Poster and demos were given at the Fall AGU meeting: “The Arctic Observing Viewer: A Web-mapping Application for U.S. Arctic Observing Activities”.
12/2014 - AOV has begun to implement use of the ISO 19115-1 metadata standard for improved interoperability, following ongoing collaboration with ADIwg.
12/2014 - Collaboration has begun with a new SAON/IASC Arctic Data Committee (ADC).
11/2014 - Enabled a SOLR engine, coupled to the AOV database, for enhanced search and filtering.
10/2014 - Peer-reviewed manuscript on AOV accepted for publication in a special issue of the journal Arctic.
07/2014 - The AOV systems architecture has been upgraded with virtual servers, and ArcGIS Server was updated to version 10.1.1.
04/2014 - Team participation at the 2014 Arctic Observing Summit (see the poster).
04/2014 - The AOV Team completed security compliance for NSF’s Information Assurance Working Group.
04/2014 - Multiple improvements made to the database and viewer (additional site information, refined Map Layers tool, enhanced Search tool, and an imagery basemap from GINA.)
04/2014 - Over 800 data collection sites added, with contributions from CAFF, CALON, USGS, SIZONET, and others.
01-03/2014 - a2dc, CAFF, and GINA became Partners.
03/2014 - Sampling sites contributed by AOOS for the NOAA RUSALCA surveys in 2004, 2007, 2009, 2012 and 2013.
12/2013 - Improvements made to the viewer, now with ship tracks, observatories & field stations, a faster Time Slider, a better basemap, expanded metadata, and more.
12/2013 - New website launched.
01-11/2013 - ACADIS, ADIwg, AOOS, IASOA, INTERACT, and NSIDC became Partners.
05-09/2013 - Brainstorming and collaboration begun or continued with ACADIS, ADCN, ADIwg, ALCC, AOOS, ARCUS, GINA, IARC, IASOA, NSIDC, NSSI, SEARCH, USGS, and others.
