During the HEACIT meeting today, we discussed concrete tasks for each sub-group to take up. For an overview of the HEACIT sub-group titles, definitions, and members please see the Google doc linked here: HEACIT Sub-groups - Google Docs
APIs and Interoperability - What is the landscape of physics databases necessary to interpret high energy data? What strategies are there to make them accessible? What are the future development plans? What are the software infrastructure challenges?
Action Item: SPEX developers are working now to create a database inquiry interface and will need input from databases sub-group for line-browsing workflows and protocols.
Database Interfaces - What is the landscape of physics databases necessary to interpret high energy data? What strategies are there to make them accessible? What are the future development plans? What are the software infrastructure challenges?
Action Item: Define an API for accessing high energy atomic databases, but beware the details. Identify current methodologies and build on that.
Use Cases - What science cases are difficult to tackle with the current landscape of high energy software tools? Where should people be developing?
Action Item: Develop a list of softwares that deal with data cubes like ALMA, MUSE, SKA, Glu, and see what fits the needs of future X-ray observatories like Athena. What needs to be done to link these tools to atomic databases (and vice versa)?
Sustainability - What infrastructure is needed to ensure the sustainability of current and future datasets and software tools? What are the best practices in data analysis? What feasible software design choices will ensure sustainability and encourage good analysis practice? How should we collect and disseminate that information?
Action Item: Collect and curate a set of exemplary datasets from high energy missions, to use as test cases for new software development.
Community Forums - Let’s setup and maintain an online space for HEACIT to announce and engage with the community of high energy software developers and users. This forum should also provide a space for users to share issues and receive crowd-sourced solutions to common problems.
Action Item: Maintain and continue to promote the HEACIT forum on Open Astronomy Discourse. Maintain communication between HEACIT and the broader user community of High Energy Astro software.