Collaborative Research: Integrated Arctic Data Management Services (IADS) to Support Arctic Research

University Corporation For Atmospheric Res, Boulder CO

Investigators

Abstract

Intellectual Merit: This is an effort to address the growing and increasingly diverse data management needs of the NSF arctic research community. Core activities of an Integrated Arctic Data Management Services (IADS) will include identifying and cataloging all data produced by NSF arctic investigators and providing assistance and tools to meet requirements to publish data and associated metadata. IADS will ensure that data are well documented to guarantee preservation and to promote interdisciplinary reuse, and it will enable data discovery through diverse portals, including a new IADS portal for publishing investigator metadata and data, special project support, and access by the broad community. IADS will foster scientific synthesis through its support services and help-desk functions, and by enabling integration of datasets stemming from NSF projects with data generated through activities of other U.S. agencies and other countries. The IADS will tackle the complexity of data types emerging from the Study of Environmental Arctic Change (SEARCH), the Arctic Observing Network (AON) and other efforts to serve diverse stakeholder needs. Along with advanced search and discovery capabilities, the IADS will include services such as reformatting (re-projection of gridded data, point to grid conversions, options to download data in a variety of formats), subsetting and visualization. Visualization services will include demos and instructions on how to use Integrated Data Viewer, Google Earth and other tools. Broader Impacts: The core operation of this activity represents broader impacts. IADS will make its data holdings discoverable and usable, promote scientific synthesis and foster interagency collaboration crucial to meeting SEARCH objectives. Through activities and coordination with SEARCH/AON leadership via workshops and other venues, data management will be elevated to an integral part of scientific research. Support of groups before they go to the field will include metadata education, instruction on how to organize a data set before publishing, and provision of software tools to take to the field. The rewards of these various activities will be better data stewardship, services and data integration capabilities to benefit the arctic research community in coming years and decades.