Laying the Foundations for Global Transdisciplinary Integration of Data from the Physical Sciences and the Social Sciences

Transcription

1 Laying the Foundations for Global Transdisciplinary Integration of Data from the Physical Sciences and the Social Sciences Lesley Wyborn 1, Simon Cox 2, Simon Hodson 3 and Geoffrey Boulton 4 1 National Computational Infrastructure, ANU, Australia and Australian National Data Service, Australia 2 Land and Water, CSIRO, Australia 3 CODATA, Paris, France 4 University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, United Kingdom

2 Technology Services The NCI National Research Data Platform Open Data Access Users National Map Climate DeVL ereefs Eco DEVL/RDC Marine DeVL/RDC Geosciences DeVL EarthServer NCI NERDIP DATA SERVICES OGC Web Feature Service OGC Web Map Service OGC Web Coverage Service OGC Web Processing Service OGC Web Cov. Process Service OPeNDAP GSKY CS/W OpenSearch GeoNetwork Catalogue GeoServer Rasdaman THREDDS NCI Index Database 10 PB NCI NERDIP EARTH SYSTEMS, ENVIROMENTAL AND SOLID EARTH DATA COLLECTIONS Landsat MODIS Himawari CMIP 5 Numerical Weather Prediction Geophysics Hazards Models Bathymetry Elevation GPS

3 What are the agreed standards for Interfacing and sharing?

4 Defining the problem space bridging the data tsunami Source: 1. The internet of today gives researchers unprecedented online access to data, tools and compute resources and there is now an unrivalled opportunity for global research challenges to be addressed using distributed data and compute resources. 2. More importantly, researchers from low to middle income countries can now participate. 3. However, varying and incompatible data standards are used across the different disciplines, and there is inadequate definition of scientific vocabularies needed to categorise observed phenomena across multiple languages, making scientific integration impossible. 4. Hence integration of diverse data can generally only be achieved in closely allied fields.

5 The Internet has impacted on how we do our science There is a growing need to share data, information and services across multiple science disciplines and beyond Increasingly: digital data collections are being re-used and repurposed by much broader communities data are being accessed by scientists who do not necessarily have the same level of discipline expertise as the originator solving the grand challenges facing our planet will require that data will be integrated from globally distributed sources

6 The key to global data integration is standardisation of vocabularies More than ever, we need to be aligning our science information with the semantic web technologies and linked open data principles Which requires the formalization, publication and maintenance of controlled vocabularies and similar reference data. However there are too many of vocabularies they are rarely harmonised Source:

7 Enter ICSU/CODATA CODATA is sponsored by the International Council For Science (ICSU) and is concerned with improving the quality, reliability, management, and accessibility of data of importance to all fields of science and technology Traditionally CODATA provides for example, the scientific and technological communities with a self-consistent set of internationally recommended values of the basic constants and conversion factors of physics and chemistry In the digital age, could CODATA be the one to provide much needed governance and coordination on digital scientific data standards in the rapidly expanding data deluge? ICSU, CODATA, and the International Social Science Council (ISSC) are developing a project that will substantially increase the capacity of the international scientific community to achieve rigorous, transdisciplinary integration of data. This will be a long-term, decadal initiative that has the potential to fundamentally enhance the capacity of science in the 21st century.

8 Our data must enable transdisciplinary research Trans What?????

9 Intradisciplinary Researchers work within a single discipline or data silo with all participants using the same standard and hence no reformatting or translation of data is required Intradisciplinary

10 Multidisciplinary Researchers from different discipline silos work together and share knowledge and results, but are not actually integrating at the data level: Multidisciplinary Outputs are combined at the research paper/report level

11 Cross-disciplinary Researchers participating on a project to integrate data across the groups decide to reformat their datasets to a single agreed suite of specific standards and formats Cross-disciplinary

12 Interdisciplinary Researchers from each domain integrate their data using customized brokers that cross walk between the different domain silos: the data of each participant remains unchanged in the back-end Interdisciplinary

13 Transdisciplinary We need data to be born connected to international standards that enable online interaction across the discipline boundaries and beyond academia. Transdisciplinary

14 More in the ICSU/ISSU/CODATA initiative The project involves 2 major strands of work: 1. Strand 1 involves projects related to 3-4 global challenges: infectious disease outbreaks, disaster risk reduction, resilient cities, and possibly agriculture. These were chosen as major issues where relevant data is accessible, where data integration is a tractable objective, and where there are existing communities of practice willing to collaborate. 2. Strand 2 will seek to support those disciplines of science that have not yet developed the standards (vocabularies, ontologies, etc) necessary for effective data integration. Formalisation of the discipline-specific vocabularies is an essential prerequisite for integration of data from different disciplines.

15 Scientific members of CODATA 1. International Astronomical Union (IAU) Working Group on Astronomical Data 2. International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) 3. International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP) 4. International Union of Biological Sciences (IUBS) 5. International Geographical Union (IGU) 6. International Union of Crystallography (IUCr) 7. International Union of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (IUBMB) 8. International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS) Commission for the Management and Application of Geoscience Information 9. International Union of Psychological Science (IUPsyS) 10.International Union of Pure and Applied Biophysics (IUPAB) 11.International Union of Nutritional Sciences (IUNS) 12.International Union of Basic and Clinical Pharmacology (IUPHAR) 13.International Union of Immunological Societies (IUIS) 14.International Union of Microbiological Societies (IUMS) 15.International Union of Soil Science (IUSS) 16.International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics (IUGG) Commission for Data and Information Data Groups/Commissions

16 CODATA Task Group for coordinating data standards amongst the Scientific Unions Chairs: 1. Xiaogang (Marshall) Ma University of Idaho 2. Lesley Wyborn 3. Simon Cox

17 Want to learn more? For more information, contact Simon Hodson, CODATA Executive Director, at: Or Lesley Wyborn ) Or Simon Cox )