Development of Intelligent Databases and Analysis Tools for Heliophysics

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.