Community Forum planning

As the workshop in January will be closed, in order to get community input we will create a place on the web, which we are calling the Community Forum.

Forum goals: inform the community, gather input.

Part 1, purpose for this Community Forum

The purpose of this forum is to incorporate input from the ESIP community to help guide the recommendations that will be made to the National Academy Board on Research Data and Information (BRDI) in relation to a call for a science data enterprise study. In addition, this Forum exists in order to inform our community of these efforts. Please consider the questions below and let us know what you think!

ESIP and representatives from the BRDI have been discussing the possibility of a NRC study to develop a unifying vision to guide the development of cohesive, effective strategies and policies to address the data grand challenges that span domains and organizations. In July 2013, a plenary discussion at the Summer ESIP meeting brought these issues into focus as panelists considered the need and feasibility of establishing a NRC study on data developments, management, and stewardship in the Earth sciences realm. In January ESIP will be holding a workshop of invited participants to help elucidate the vision.

Our goal is to provide a set of recommendations to the NRC regarding the scope and conduct of the study. A more complete discussion of the idea is presented in an article submitted to AGU EOS: http://wiki.esipfed.org/images/2/2f/EOSPaper_Forum.docx. If this study is conducted and is successful, it is possible that future studies would follow and the endeavor could become evolutionary.

Current Events

Events at AGU

Town Hall Monday, 12/9: TH15F. TH15F. Connecting Data Stakeholders for a Long-term Vision of Data Stewardship 6:15 PM - 7:15 PM; 306 (Moscone South)

Presentation Friday, 12/13: IN51D-08. Establishing Long Term Data Management Research Priorities via a Data Decadal Survey 9:45 - 10:00 AM; 2020 (Moscone West)

Part 2, Questions for the community

• Thinking 5 years down the road, what trends will impact the way your agency collects, manages, stewards and uses Earth science data?
• What trends or technologies will have the biggest impact?
• How will your agency respond to these trends? What will be constant? What will have to change?
• Is there an aspect of your job that keeps you up at night? What would make your job easier?
• What is your vision for the future regarding scientific data? Please be bold and include fanciful, idealistic, lofty, and even utopian ideas.
• Do you think an NRC study would be useful and worthwhile? Why?
• If so, what do you think should be the scope of the study? How can we avoid a study that is so extreme in either depth or breadth that it is not useful?
• Should the study be limited to Earth and Space Science only or should it be broader to include, say, biomedical, physical, and social sciences? If broad, how broad?
• Does it make sense to focus the study at a low level, focusing on details in scientific domains of limited scope and then generalize? Or, as data management problems across domains have some similar characteristics, should we start with the a broad perspective and descend into greater detail later?
• Should the study also consider software and methodologies involved in data creation?
• Any other comments?