Olly has created a web interface that plots our data on to Google Earth satellite images. Our data is aggregated to the centre of BNG 1km squares to preserve confidentiality and to standardise the resolution of our database as there are several different data sources to compare. I am concerned that end users may forget / not read the project documentation and think that a point marks the exact location of data when in reality it could be anywhere in a km square around the point. Does anyone else share these concerns - or have a way of reminding an end user of this?
Andrew.
Showing posts with label users. Show all posts
Showing posts with label users. Show all posts
Tuesday, 2 August 2011
Tuesday, 7 June 2011
RCUK and HEFCE announcement to support Open Access
A majority of researchers would probably agree that Open Access is a positive way to disseminate research and reach a wider audience and the wider audience would probably appreciate their right to view research once barriers are lifted. Removing the cost or avoiding the sale of a product is and has been shown to increase accessibility – take the aerial shots on Google Earth for example, how many home computer users have not snatched a look at their back yard or favourite holiday destination? The process is the same for documentation.
We sat down and discussed the number of ways that articles are being made and sourced as Open Access. Our different backgrounds unearthed that we are often unaware of particular systems and procedures in disciplines outside our own fields and operations in other institutions. This serves to illustrate how complicated and mushrooming the idea of Open Access is, and how limited forms of Open Access have existed for a number of years. Some kind of structuring and linkage between Open Access concepts appears a good way forward so the news of support from RCUK and HEFCE is welcome.
There are slight concerns about the clash of the peer review and so called pay to publish options (we realise these are the extremes and some hybrid versions are in place), as these can compromise and conflict with mounting pressures in the academic world. Academics are aiming for journals with high impact (to meet REF needs), the ones outside the public domain that often come with the subscription. The REF pressures far outweigh the need to dose every man on the street with detailed research findings. On the other hand allowing Open Access to research and project documentation is an alternative opportunity to champion and publicise the achievements to similar and interested academic audiences whilst the general public can cast their eye over our achievements if they choose. Which system should we allow ourselves to gravitate to?
How does this influence the HALOGEN group? Much of our documentation is ‘white paper’ information on what and how we do things, information that we are willing (and proud!) to present to an open audience which also serves as a publicity agent and in effect enhances the purpose of our work. In fact much of our documentation is (or will be) available, we are encouraged to contribute to our University repository and we have our HALOGEN project website. The website is a source of information at different levels; short summaries for those with a passing interest and then the links and downloads provide detail to the audience who need to be more interactive or choose to know more depth in what we do. There is an opportunity with Open Access to contribute to a bigger more widely accessible repository – but guidance is essential and we wait to hear the outcomes of this recent announcement from RCUK and HEFCE.
Andrew, Olly and Dave.
Friday, 8 April 2011
Excitement at the GIS tutorial
Last week I gave a GIS tutorial using some prototype data we cleaned up from the original KEPN, PAS and GUL data sets to Turi, Jayne, Phillip, Dave and Mark W. The object was to help empower these blokes by showing them how to load up the data into a GIS environment and chop up the data with some simple querying methods thus stimulating the construction of new research questions.
Talk about the wow factor - they were really chuffed to see a spatial plot of what they used to know as rows and rows of tabulated data. After filtering the data suddenly their hypotheses were mapped out in front of them, e.g. Place names with Cornish elements did gravitate to the county of Cornwall, place names with Norse language elements did gravitate to the North and East of England. When ancillary data such as roads and rivers were plot as background layers I think the cogs and wheels started spinning and ways to answer research questions were suddenly looking so much easier for the researchers.
The data was questioned though, and quite rightly so, it should be a standard procedure for any researcher to be sure of the origins and quality of their data.
(i) Some of the grid references were slipping through our padding procedure and looking too accurate (by this I mean our rounding up of grid references to 0.5km). We did this to ensure privacy of data and maintain a consistent resolution between datasets. This is a small technical issue we need to address.
(ii) Cornish place name elements were detected in Herefordshire and way up in Lancashire. In retrospect Dave and I examined the original data source a few days later and found that these results were true. It was the original data that was throwing up the anomalies, technically the HALOGEN team appeared to get things right.
What do we learn from this? Firstly all the hard work is paying off and the researchers find this a really useful tool. Secondly we can only deal with the data we receive. We did our own quality check to be sure we had it right, if the source data is wrong HALOGEN cannot 'make up' data that fits, a strategy of quality control on the original data is required.
Andrew
Talk about the wow factor - they were really chuffed to see a spatial plot of what they used to know as rows and rows of tabulated data. After filtering the data suddenly their hypotheses were mapped out in front of them, e.g. Place names with Cornish elements did gravitate to the county of Cornwall, place names with Norse language elements did gravitate to the North and East of England. When ancillary data such as roads and rivers were plot as background layers I think the cogs and wheels started spinning and ways to answer research questions were suddenly looking so much easier for the researchers.
The data was questioned though, and quite rightly so, it should be a standard procedure for any researcher to be sure of the origins and quality of their data.
(i) Some of the grid references were slipping through our padding procedure and looking too accurate (by this I mean our rounding up of grid references to 0.5km). We did this to ensure privacy of data and maintain a consistent resolution between datasets. This is a small technical issue we need to address.
(ii) Cornish place name elements were detected in Herefordshire and way up in Lancashire. In retrospect Dave and I examined the original data source a few days later and found that these results were true. It was the original data that was throwing up the anomalies, technically the HALOGEN team appeared to get things right.
What do we learn from this? Firstly all the hard work is paying off and the researchers find this a really useful tool. Secondly we can only deal with the data we receive. We did our own quality check to be sure we had it right, if the source data is wrong HALOGEN cannot 'make up' data that fits, a strategy of quality control on the original data is required.
Andrew
Wednesday, 9 March 2011
Project Plan Post 5 of 7: Project Team Relationships and End User Engagement.
The core Project Team will work under the direction of David Carter (Senior Project Manager), and will include key researchers from each department involved: Prof Mark Jobling (Senior Research Fellow in Genetics); Dr Joanna Story (Senior Lecturer in Early Medieval History); Dr Simon James (Reader in Archaeology); Dr Phillip Shaw (Lecturer in English Language and Old English) plus Dr Jayne Carroll (Director of the Institute for Name Studies, University of Nottingham).
Information on the very experienced technical staff that will support all phases of the project is detailed in the table below. The membership of the technical team will flex in line with the demands of the project.
Regular reviews will be undertaken of progress, actions, risks, issues, deliverables and plans with reports to the Project Board. The Technical Team will meet at least fortnightly or as required.
Please direct questions to any of the team. Specific points of contact are:
Project Management and General Enquiries - Dave Carter
Development tools, methods and issues - Olly Butters
Geospatial issues and problems - Andrew Bradley
Name | Project Role | Experience |
David Carter (DC - email dpc15@le.ac.uk) | Project Manager | >20 years with a successful track record as an IT infrastructure Programme Manager in the commercial sector. Qualified in PRINCE2. Project managed the implementation of the UoL’s new High Performance Computing Service (c. £2M CIF-funded initiative), Research Data Storage Service and the HALOGEN Pilot Project. |
Dr Andrew Bradley (AB - email avb4@le.ac.uk) | GIS Specialist | > 5 years as a GIS and remote sensing post doctoral researcher in the Department of Geography at the UoL and Reading University. Considerable experience of transferring historical datasets into a GIS environment. Worked as part of original HALOGEN development team. |
Research Computing Services Architect | >10 years providing research computing infrastructure and support for researchers. Worked on original HALOGEN pilot system. Responsible for the long-term support of any solution deployed as part of this project. | |
Mark Widdowson (MW - email mw162@le.ac.uk) | Database Analyst | >10 years experience as a database architect. Worked on original project to build the HALOGEN pilot system. Responsible for the long-term support of any solution deployed as part of this project. |
Olly Butters (OB - email ob30@le.ac.uk) | Developer and Database Analyst | > 5 years experience in MySQL and PHP related developments and 10 years for scientific software development. Experienced at dealing with multiple datasets of varying qualities and maintaining/managing research databases. |
Anthony Gibson (AG - email ajg38@le.ac.uk) | Senior Appl. Support Analyst | > 5 years experience as a software developer. With over 10 years experience of working with Business Objects based management information systems. |
Project Management and General Enquiries - Dave Carter
Development tools, methods and issues - Olly Butters
Geospatial issues and problems - Andrew Bradley
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