Abstract
The project develops innovative tools to extract and analyze the
available observational and modeling data in order to enable new
physics-based and machine-learning approaches for understanding and
predicting solar activity and its influence on the geospace and Earth
systems. The heliophysics data are abundant: several terabytes of solar
and space observations are obtained every day. Finding the relevant
information from numerous spacecraft and ground-based data archives and
using it is paramount, and currently a difficult task. The scope of the
project is to develop and evaluate data integration tools to meet common
data access and discovery needs for two types of Heliophysics data: 1)
long-term synoptic activity and variability, and 2) extreme geoeffective
solar events caused by solar flares and eruptions. The methodology
consists in the development of a data integration infrastructure and
access methods capable of 1) automatic search and identification of
image patterns and event data records produced by space and ground-based
observatories, 2) automatic association of parallel
multi-wavelength/multi-instrument database entries with unique patterns
or event identifiers, 3) automatic retrieval of such data records and
pipeline processing for the purpose of annotating each pattern or event
according to a predefined set of physical parameters inferable from
complementary data sources, and 4) generation of a pattern or catalog
and associated user-friendly graphical interface tools that are capable
to provide fast search, quick preview, and automatic data retrieval
capabilities. The Team has developed and implemented the Helioportal
that provides a synergy of solar flare observations, taking advantage of
big datasets from the ground- and space-based instruments, and allows
the larger research community to significantly speed up investigations
of flare events, perform a broad range of new statistical and case
studies, and test and validate theoretical and computational models. The
Helioportal accumulates, integrates and presents records of physical
descriptors of solar flares, as well as the magnetic characteristic of
active regions from various catalogs of observational data from
different observatories and heliophysics missions.