Figure from partners at University of Wisconsin Madison Philip A. Townsend Lab
ImgSPEC
ImgSPEC - Seamless User Experience to Cloud Processing
The Imaging Spectroscopy Processing Environment (ImgSPEC) is a prototype on-demand processing system on the cloud that enables use of many different kinds of datasets but specifically demonstrates scalable compute with big data from imaging spectroscopy.
January 4, 2022
ImgSPEC prototypes and refines open science use cases for using diverse open data across missions by stress testing bounding conditions on contributions from users outside of designated missions for on-demand product generation
Imaging Spectroscopy is high dimensionality spectral data is rapidly emerging as a go-to data source for many applications such as characterizing biodiversity and quantifying plant traits and ecosystem function.
The broader community wants to make use of these data, but may not have the expertise or interest in processing the data themselves.
Likewise, agencies or other product developers may not have the capacity to generate all possible products and distribute them
We cannot do what we have always done! We cannot rely on a single project or lab to create information products that can be downloaded and processed locally.
ImgSPEC vision is to provide an open source science platform that supports analysis by diverse perspectives through inclusive collaboration, that increases access to data, data tools, and compute resources. This Enables us to take advantage of the information age to provide decision support* with scientific advancement using analytics by many to create relevant information from the wealth of big data
ImgSPEC primary objective is to demonstrate an end-to-end, on-demand, processing platform on the cloud for imaging spectroscopy Level 1 calibrated radiance data through Level 3+ information products for the terrestrial ecology use case.
ImgSPEC addresses researcher’s biggest pain points:
- Democratize ability to provide value-added products and analytics using big data
- Reduces barriers by:
- Seamless user experience to transition from local computer to scalable cloud
- Reducing download times
- Facilitating reproducibility
ImgSPEC uses design thinking to cater to a range of users from managers to researchers and GIS technicians to provide a collaborative work environment and user interface for seamlessly transitioning users from their local computers to the cloud and facilitating FAIR data principles. FAIR data principles make code findable, accessible, interoperable, and reproducible, and often take specialized expertise beyond the domain expertise of most users.
