This dialogue is archived with 7 entries. 
 

Comments: Earth system models, together with data analysis and visualization, are critical to the pathway that moves intellectual capital from data to information, to understanding, to knowledge and on to application and decisions for societal benefit. Literally, hundreds of scientific models of Earth processes and subsystems yield products often archived as data that are manipulated using increasingly sophisticated analysis and visualization software tools.

Unfortunately, the broader community of applied users and educators often is unaware of or lacks access to these models and specialized analysis and visualization tools. Needed is a framework for describing, cataloging, sharing and using Earth system models and tools, especially in the areas of climate, environment and health. A first step in this direction might be to identify some examples of models used for climate, environment and health applications, as well as the needs of the target audience to be served by these model.

What problems are you trying to solve?
What data, models and tools are you already using?
What sort of additional data, models and analysis tools would be useful for your work?
Are you working on local, regional or global problems?

>From a discussion of these kinds of issues we can hopefully address the overarching questions posed

• What information about models (and data and tools) would make it easier for a wider audience to use these models? and
• How should we as a community craft an infrastructure to address this need?

Sunday, July 06, 2003

Participant name: Martin Ruzek

Affiliation: USRA

Country: USA

Comments: I find two features very helpful in evaluating models. We should consider how to:
1) compare models addressing the same problem; and
2) provide independent critiques.
Traditional publishing mechanisms are: "news and views" on research articles; and commentary as part of a conference proceedings.

Monday, July 07, 2003

Participant name: Joan L. Aron

Affiliation: Science Communication Studies (IAI/CRN)

Country: USA

Comments: This discussion should link to John Sterman's article A Skeptic's Guide to Computer Models, which addresses models of social and economic systems. He emphasizes the education of the consumer/user of a model that has been developed by others. Although most practitioners of Earth System Science are trained in the natural sciences, the themes of social and economic systems are relevant for two main reasons:

• Earth System Science models are highly dependent on time and place. In this sense, they have more in common with social and economic processes than invariant physical laws.
• Applications of Earth System Science have major social and economic components.

Ecosystem Change and Public Health: A Global Perspective (Aron & Patz, eds.) draws explicitly upon Sterman's ideas in its Chapter 5 on Integrated Assessment.

Wednesday, July 09, 2003

Participant name: Joan L. Aron

Affiliation: Science Communication Studies (IAI/CRN)

Country: USA

Comments: I would like to see more models developed for microclimatological uses. Who is working on developing these and what and where is the data source?

Thursday, July 17, 2003

Participant name: Adrienne Barlow

Affiliation: NOAA-federal government

Country: USA

Comments: A collection of Earth system models and links, assembled as part of a recent NASA proposal effort, is available at http://esmare.usra.edu

Tuesday, July 22, 2003

Participant name: Martin Ruzek

Affiliation: USRA

Country: USA

Comments: I think that, in dealing with climate and health, we try to apply the methods according to our disciplines. The epidemiological bias (my case) will try to use some methods like Poisson regression to assess the association between two variables. It seems to me that correlation studies fail to adjust for some variables.

In the case of Mexico, the main variable that explains the malaria variation is the vector control program. How much of the variability of malaria could be explained in this context were efficiency, investment or number of applications of pesticides the leading variable??? In other words, our question is: Which is the best model that is capable of adjusting for these and other variables (such as migration or social vulnerability)???

Monday, July 28, 2003

Participant name: Horacio Riojas

Affiliation: INSP

Country: Mexico

Comments: Regarding climate and health, I think, for the time being, we are in need of an information system which will be able to deliver environmental information and data quickly and easily. Being interested in this topic for quite a while, I have found it is hard and time consuming to obtain such information. I think, for most health scientists, time and resources are very limited, especially when they are dealing with products they are not familiar with.

Motivated by this and others (K-12 education), I initiated some activities in this area at NASA/GSFC/DAAC (see my previous post in Forum A on July 18, 2003 concerning Earth System Science Education for International Health and Development). We plan to apply this prototype to other NASA data products, such as, MODIS aerosol, Aeronet and SeaWIFS products so people who don't know programming can do research. The MODIS prototype, funded by the Aerocenter, will be released to the public shortly.

We are all time poor and have limited resources. How to improve research efficiency will be and should be, in my opinion, a serious topic in NASA and NSF. Every year, a lot of research dollars have been spent on data processing, but results in refereed journals hardly can be used in applications. Why don't we build several analysis centers at which everyone who is interested in science can do some studies and research over the Internet? It is time for us to focus on science, not on some special data format!

Monday, August 25, 2003

Participant name: Zhong Liu

Affiliation: George Mason Univ/NASA GSFC DAAC

Country: USA

Diagnostics and prediction of climate variability and human health impacts in the tropical Americas