Carrying out a fundamental ecological niche analysis

Proposer: TimSutton

Scenario: Joe is a researcher interested in discovering the hypothetical distribution range of a species. He wants to be able to find species occurrence data using the GBIF portal and then pass it to openModeller. He starts by entering a species name into a web page. When he submits the page a message appears telling him that the name he has used is actually a synonym and perhaps he'd like to use the preferred name as well as his original synonym? He chooses yes to use both names and is presented with a new page providing a list of occurrences for his species. Each occurrence includes the latitude, longitude and a globally unique identifier. He can click on the globally unique identifier to find all the provenance for that occurrence. A link on the page offers the option to perform an fundamental ecological niche analysis using the points provided. He clicks this link and a new form appears asking a few questions. When he submits the request, a new page appears telling him that he will be sent an email when his job is complete. Some minutes later and email arrives in his inbox telling him his model is done! Clicking a link in the email takes him to a page that lets him visualise the resulting model in a web mapping application with the original occurrence points overlaid.

Summary of technical requirements:

• A name searching service
• An occurrences service that takes as input one name and its synonyms. Ideally WFS but to start with maybe just a very simple XML file would do
• The openModeller Web Service
• A mapping service that can be used to present the results.
• A web site that integrates the services outlined above.

Notes: While the above use case represents a very simple interaction, it provides a useful starting point for a minimal interaction between several components.

Candidate Technologies: