Geo-Data Informatics (GDI) 2011 Workshop

Geo-Data Informatics (GDI) 2011 Workshop:
Exploring the Life Cycle, Citation and Integration of Geo-Data

Cyndy Chandler will attend the Geo-Data Informatics 2011 Workshop as an invited participant.  The final workshop report will be made available at the GDI Wiki site.

GDI Workshop 2011 Description
The workshop, convened by Peter Fox (TWC, RPI) and Rich Signell (USGS) with funding support from USGS and NSF, will host 100 invited participants. NSF in close collaboration with the USGS requested that the requisite "GEO" (defined in the broadest sense) communities be brought together to advance the next phase of discussions on modern GeoData Informatics. One objective for this workshop is to substantially advance discussions and directions of three focus areas: data life cycle, data integration and data attribution, with strong emphasis on end-use.

Over the past few years in the United States as well as world-wide, significant academic and agency attention has been focused on advancing the understanding of all aspects of the different stages of treatment of data and information sources in addressing current problems in science, engineering and medicine. The increased attention derives from a variety of sources, not the least of which is the full emergence of data science and science informatics. Among the implications are volume, complexity and heterogeneity and the desire to solve problems at the intersections of disciplines for which the past, current and future data collections are of paramount importance. Further, the desire for significant returns on investment for data associated with scientific research, engineering and societally relevant breakthroughs is increasing, as is the essential need to propagate rich and relevant data and information products up the data value chain and extending to diverse communities of end users.

This workshop brings together the requisite scientists, information specialists, librarians, computer scientists and data managers who specialize and generalize in a broad variety of geo-discipline areas and applications, with the primary objective to: substantially advance cross-community discussions on the workshop focus topics, and to provide a state-of-the-field report to NSF and the USGS of the geoinformatics community’s capabilities and needs that could in turn ultimately benefit from an academic-multi-agency community-focused set of development activities. Additional deliverables would include: a) Readiness assessment and identification of gaps for both technology and education around geo-data informatics and their priorities, b) Grand challenge opportunities as well as immediate next steps, and c) Identification of additional stakeholders and means to include their inputs. The time is right for a series of discussions across the various geoscience discipline communities. The proposed workshop is a forum for this discussion and is an important component of the conversation, which must occur immediately. It is very likely that a highly distributed implementation will be required the success of which will rely upon a number of focused and coordinated efforts.

Outcomes
* A survey of what different groups are doing, what parts of a data life cycle, data citation and data integration frameworks are well established, and to determine if there are common gaps across disciplines.
* Guidance or prioritization of addressing gaps in the lifecycle of data acquisition, curation and preservation would be a useful outcome for the NSF potentially leading to new program opportunities. Similar prioritization and program opportunities for data citation and integration are also envisioned.
* Develop a communications strategy to meet the needs of the research community, identify demographically underserved communities including aspects of management of any geoinformatics data infrastructure.
* Identify how academic and agency collaboration in geoinformatics and Geo-Data informatics data life cycle, citation and integration can be optimally leveraged and implemented to serve the needs of all constituents.

The workshop results will be described in a 'state-of-the-field' report to NSF and the mission agencies (USGS, NASA, NOAA, EPA, DoE, ...) of the geoinformatics community’s capabilities and needs that could in turn ultimately benefit from an academic-agency community-focused set of development activities.

Cyndy will share thoughts on management of marine ecosystem research data, data publication and citation, and data synthesis and integration. A recurrent theme will be the importance of essential metadata to: improve the efficacy of data discovery and access; to enable assessment of fitness for purpose; and to ensure accurate reuse of data.