Community Engagement to Inform EarthCube Governance

Arizona Geological Survey, Tucson AZ

Investigators

Abstract

EarthCube is a joint venture between the Directorate of Geosciences and the Office of Cyberinfrastructure at the National Science Foundation. It is a community-driven effort to design and implement an effective data and knowledge management system for the geosciences that will integrates disparate data sets and web services and serves all members of the geoscience community. This planning and assesment project collects and synthesizes the prodigious amount of geoscience and cyberinfrastrucutre community input on possible governance structures for EarthCube that were generated in the run up to the June 2012 EarthCube meeting and actities that have happened during the post meeting timeframe. The project focuses on broadening grass roots geoscience engagement in the process, deepening the input and collecting science-drivers from geoscience communities, and organizing and summarinzing all information so it can be used effectively by the initial EarthCube governance body that will be selected in early 2013. The PI and his outreach team will hold face-to-face and virtual meetings as well as attend and run Town Hall meeings at professional society meetings to engage stakeholders. An important aspect of the project will be to identify community needs and incorporate their suggestions into the final summaries. Project goals also include building stakeholder alignment around shared goals in terms of producing ways to establish standardization of data practices and aspects of its management as well as create a community consensus structure for the evaluation of new tools and utilities. Broader impacts of the work are focused primarily on building infrastructure for science in terms of informing the development of an effective and well received community governance structure.