Launching sandpiper: how to better collaborate and exchange data across geomorphology

Essential information

• When: 17^th and 18^th April at Saint Anthony Falls Laboratory in Minneapolis, MN, USA.
• Who: Anyone from the geomorphology community.
• Registration: Free, with limited funding for travel and lodging available, register here.
• Register by 28^th Feb 2025 for funding consideration; registration deadline 1^st April 2025.

About

Geomorphologists use raster data to represent the Earth’s surface and study how it evolves through time. Regardless of whether they come from satellite images, lidar surveys, flume experiments, or computer simulations, raster datasets all share some common attributes. For example, images usually represent two spatial dimensions; a set of images can represent snapshots through time. And yet, there is no common data standard that is well-suited for analyzing and sharing raster datasets representing geomorphological change.

We invite you to help us solve this problem. This in-person workshop is the first in a series of four over the coming years that are funded by the USA NSF as part of the sandpiper toolchain project. Our team and collaborators are planning to create a three part research infrastructure toolchain to support geomorphology research. The first part is a modern open-source experimental hardware platform, so that more people can build affordable robotics and sensor systems in their labs. The second part is an analysis package for depositional geomorphic systems, so that researchers don’t have to reimplement code for common analyses like finding the shoreline of a delta. The third part is a data standard that facilitates exchange and reuse in experimental and computational data.

We are seeking scientists and engineers who work in experimental and computational geomorphology to help us identify priorities for hardware, software and data interoperability.

In this two-day workshop, attendees will identify community priorities for data sharing in geomorphology and set the scope for the sandpiper toolchain project over the coming years; we aim to reach these goals by community consensus through this workshop and future workshops.

We will have keynote presentations (check our website for updates) and breakout discussions. Ultimately, our aspiration is that the sandpiper toolchain will grow to become a community resource. In these sessions, your ideas will guide the group, and help us identify what features this new community resource should have, and what priorities we should honor. We want you to be a part of this community, we want to help you do your research and work faster, better, and more reproducibly. We want you to help us see these ideas through to production.

Schedule

More detailed schedule to come.

Day 1 – 17^th April 2025

• Morning session: Data sharing and standards: past efforts and future directions
  • Keynote talk: Greg Tucker
  • Breakout discussion
  • Moderated panel: Leslie Hsu, Wonsuck Kim, Brandon McElroy, and Daven Quinn
• Afternoon session: Designing open-source hardware for geomorphology experiments
  • Saint Anthony Falls Laboratory tour
  • Keynote talk: Anastasia Piliouras
  • Breakout discussion
  • Moderated panel: Mirko Musa, and Anya Leenman, Chris Ellis

Day 2 – 18^th April 2025

• Morning session: Community analysis software for scientific reproducibility
  • Keynote talk: Zoltán Sylvester
  • Breakout discussion
  • Moderated panel: Will Kearney, Laurent Roberge
• Afternoon session: Forging a data standard that we can stick to
  • Keynote talk: sandpiper team
  • Breakout discussion: sandpiper team
  • Moderated panel: sandpiper team

Registration

Registration is free, and we have limited funds available to support attendees. This support will include travel expenses and lodging for the workshop. We will prioritize supporting travel and lodging for early career scientists and students.

We can also provide up to $200 in additional support for attendee expenses incurred as a result of the workshop (e.g., childcare).

We will consider requests for funding support starting on 28^th February 2025, and will send notices of awards by 15^th March 2025. Participants identified for funding support will be reimbursed after the conclusion of the workshop.

Deadline to register is 1^st April 2025.

To register, please fill out the registration form.