ODMX
An information model and associated cyberinfrastructure for effective management and use of project centric multi domain geoscience data
What is ODMX?
ODMX is a geoscience centric information model and an associated cyberinfrastructure. Together these enable integration of multidisciplinary earth science data from different sources in a single database, as well as easy interaction with this database using REST APIs or directly with python. ODMX was inspired by and is based on ODM2. The development of ODM2 was funded under NSF grants by a multidisciplinary team from academia. The development of ODMX was done by Subsurface Insights in collaboration with multiple collaborators. This development was done as part of projects funded under DOE SBIR grants and through synergistic project support. ODM2 is described in detail in this 2016 Horsburgh et al. article. As the motivation behind ODMX is essentially the same as it was for ODM2 this article is a good place to understand the general concepts and motivation behind ODMX.
What is the difference between ODM2 and ODMX?
The ODMX information model is based on ODM2 and many of the ODMX tables are the same as ODM2 tables. However, the associated cyberinfrastructure for ODM2 and ODMX are not related. See here for a detailed description of the history behind ODM2 and the different branches, and the differences between the different code bases. Diagrams and tables of ODMX are here.
How do I get started with ODMX?
The ODMX information model can be used to generate an ODMX database. This database can be populated with heterogeneous data from different sources. For instance, if a project has data from USGS stations, data from commercial loggers and laboratory analysis results from aqueous samples ODMX could integrate all this data in such a way that all this data is homogenized.
The ODMX github repository setup and maintained by Subsurface Insights is the place to get ODMX. This repository contains details needed to get started and a simple working example. These details should hopefully help potential users understand more about ODMX and the associated cyberinfrastructure.
Who developed ODMX?
ODMX was developed by Subsurface Insights in collaboration with multiple groups (including LBNL scientists from the LBNL Watershed Function SFA and Anthony Aufdenkampe from Limnotech). Funding for the development of ODMX was provided under several DOE SBIR grants from the US Department of Energy Biological and Environmental Research Program. Subsurface Insights staff has set up this website and maintains the github repository. If you have any questions about ODMX you can email Roelof Versteeg at Subsurface Insights.
Are there any future plans for ODMX and how can I get involved?
The open source release of ODMX has been extensively tested and should be robust. There are several features that we plan to add in the coming months, specifically data source type specific harvesters. We welcome collaborations in enhancing ODMX – just reach out to us. Note that right now we do not have any formal publications on ODMX but we are working on an article describing ODMX and several use cases in detail.
Acknowledgements:
This material is based upon work supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Biological and Environmental Research SBIR program under Awards Number DE-SC-0009732 and DE-SC-0018447.”