Data Analytics for Canadian Climate Services (DACCS) is a collaboration between the University of Toronto, the Pacific Climate Impacts Consortium (PCIC), the Computer Research Institute of Montréal (CRIM), and Ouranos.
Canada's data infrastructure is inadequate for working with the rapidly growing volume of climate and Earth observation data. The DACCS project will simplify access to climate and remote sensing data, and will allow scientists and climate researchers to publish their analysis tools alongside the data, thus lowering the barrier to innovation in climate science and opening up new forms of analysis using state-of-the-art machine learning and visualisation tools.
The aim of the DACCS project is to drastically simplify the time-consuming tasks required to extract relevant climate information from large data sets, allowing researchers to focus on solving scientific problems rather than on data management.
DACCS is developing a platform called Marble that will facilitate the conversion of raw climate data from satellite observations and simulation models into relevant, credible and actionable information products. The Marble Platform is comprised of reusable modular components that will provide services to a broad scientific community through a unified user interface for: dataset search and discovery; user data management; data analytics; visualisation; workflow management; publishing; and application deployment. As part of a larger Federated Cloud Infrastructure, through Marble, scientists can access data from different sources and process them using existing algorithms developed by the academic, government and private sectors.
The Marble Platform will foster the creation of a new generation of advanced data analytics tools, in order to better understand the relationships between remote sensing data, climate model projections, and climate change impact studies.
| Name | Affiliation | Expertise |
|---|---|---|
| Steve Easterbrook | University of Toronto | Computer Science, Machine Learning |
| Samuel Foucher | Computer Research Institute of Montreal (CRIM) | Vision and Imaging |
| Nathan Gillett | Environment and Climate Change Canada | Climate Research |
| David Huard | Ouranos | Climate Scenarios and Services |
| Paul Kushner | University of Toronto | Physics |
| Damon H. Matthews | Concordia University | Geography, Planning and Environment |
| Dan McKenney | Canadian Forest Service, Natural Resources Canada | |
| Bruno Tremblay | McGill University | |
| Debra Wunch | University of Toronto | |
| Francis Zwiers | Pacific Climate Impacts Consortium, University of Victoria |
The DACCS Marble Platform