SY028-01
Advancing Open Data Sharing Across the Earth, Social, and Health Sciences for Pressing Societal Challenges
Advancing Open Data Sharing Across the Earth, Social, and Health Sciences for Pressing Societal Challenges
Wednesday, 9 December 2020: 19:01
Virtual
Abstract:
The Earth sciences have been a leader in the promotion of open science and open data sharing for more than 60 years, as exemplified by the International Geophysical Year in 1957-58 that led to the establishment of the World Data Centers and the Federation of Astronomical and Geophysical data analysis Services, now part of the International Science Council’s World Data System (ISC-WDS). Given the global scope of many environmental challenges, open sharing of data has proven critical to enabling and accelerating scientific advancement and to building transparency and trust in scientific outputs. More recently, there has been increasing awareness of the need to link Earth science data with other types of scientific data, e.g., coming from the social and health sciences, in order to improve understanding of both the drivers and impacts of environmental variability and change, and support policy and decision making. In particular, pressing issues such as climate change, pandemics, wildfires, air and water pollution, and extreme geophysical events highlight the need to better assess complex human-environment interactions through analyses and models that incorporate diverse data sources.
In this regard, it is important to address different approaches to open data and science across different scientific communities, and seek ways to promote interoperability and harmonization. In the social and health sciences, for example, concerns about privacy and confidentiality of human subjects data provide important limitations on what types of data can be openly shared. Data sources are also more diverse, and may come with intellectual property, copyright, or license restrictions or conditions. We summarize experience to date by the NASA Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC), which has worked to make socioeconomic data more accessible and usable to Earth scientists and other users, including efforts to support open access and licensing. We also address recent and ongoing efforts to improve data sharing through the Group on Earth Observations (GEO), which has recently reformed its activities under a new Data Working Group.
In this regard, it is important to address different approaches to open data and science across different scientific communities, and seek ways to promote interoperability and harmonization. In the social and health sciences, for example, concerns about privacy and confidentiality of human subjects data provide important limitations on what types of data can be openly shared. Data sources are also more diverse, and may come with intellectual property, copyright, or license restrictions or conditions. We summarize experience to date by the NASA Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC), which has worked to make socioeconomic data more accessible and usable to Earth scientists and other users, including efforts to support open access and licensing. We also address recent and ongoing efforts to improve data sharing through the Group on Earth Observations (GEO), which has recently reformed its activities under a new Data Working Group.