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Heliophysics Events Knowledgebase Support For Heliophysics And Space Weather Research

Presentation #216.08 in the session “Space Based Instrumentation and Catalogs”.

Published onJun 18, 2021
Heliophysics Events Knowledgebase Support For Heliophysics And Space Weather Research

The Heliophysics Events Knowledgebase (HEK) began full operations in 2010 in support of the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) with the purpose of helping researchers navigate the daily 2TB flood of data from its 3 instruments. It consisted of three main components, along with the associated hardware and software infrastructure: an automated Event Detection System (EDS) for identifying features and events in the (primarily) SDO data stream; the Heliophysics Event Registry (HER) for capturing the metadata extracted by the EDS; and the Heliophysics Coverage Registry (HCR) for tracking subsets of the SDO datasets requested by users. The infrastructure underlying the HER and HCR had previously been prototyped as the Hinode Observation system for the Hinode/Solar-B mission; it was based on an implementation of the VOEvent XML standard developed by the International Virtual Observatory Alliance (IVOA). The HEK team realized that the issues they were addressing for SDO and Hinode would continue to be issues for new missions as Heliophysics entered the era of Big Data and as the Heliophysics System Observatory came into being. They spent considerable effort to design the HEK to be an expandable community resource. The HER can support new event classes, data sources and algorithms, as well as support concepts such as “hypotheses” or meta-events connecting other HEK events and community annotation and cross-linking similar to Facebook and DOIs. These were first put to the test with the addition of the IRIS mission launched in 2013. The HCR was revamped to support the more complex datasets and to enhance and better integrate the HCR search capabilities. In recent years the HEK team has seen an opportunity to transition from a service focused on missions where the Lockheed Martin Solar and Astrophysics Laboratory has been a core team member to a broader, community-oriented resource for heliophysics. The launch of the next generation of heliospheric missions, including Parker Solar Probe and Solar Orbiter, are revealing challenges in event management and mission coordination for which the HEK approach offers a straightforward solution. The completion of new ground-based observatories such as DKIST present opportunities to broaden the range of datasets in this common resource as well. Here we present our recent efforts and plans to support these new missions as well as the broader needs of heliophysics and space weather research.

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