Author
Kim Finney (Australian Antarctic Data Centre)
Abstract
Australia is a signatory to the Antarctic Treaty which is a unique instrument covering the region of the earth below 60o South – a region encompassing the Antarctic continent, its surrounding ocean and atmosphere. Under the Antarctic Treaty System information and data are deemed freely exchangeable goods. There is no corresponding Treaty for the Arctic and as yet no internationally agreed Arctic policy regarding data transfer. But given the importance that both the Antarctic and Arctic are known to play in the global climate system there is a pressing need for the communities involved in bipolar research to develop an effective, internationally supported data exchange infrastructure. This infrastructure must be capable of freeing up data to fuel more predictive science and strategically enable the type of environmental change detection that is useful for formulating potential management action in response to undesirable ecosystem shifts.
CODATA, the International Council For Science’s (ICSU) Data and Technology Committee is championing the development of a bipolar data network to meet these goals called the Polar Information Commons (PIC). Key partners include the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Science (SCAR), International Arctic Science Council (IASC), International Polar Year Program Office (IPO), World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) and the ICSU’s Strategic Coordinating Committee on Information and Data (SCCID).
PIC will not be built from scratch but will instead rely on bringing together various existing community efforts in the data management space. It will require strengthening and extension of both the institutional and technological frameworks that currently underpin polar data management and will use Science Commons approaches to foster ‘scientific norms’ that have the capacity to culturally motivate on-line publication of data.
This paper outlines Australia’s contribution to establishing an Antarctic data infrastructure, identifies lessons learned from that experience and postulates what will be required to develop a robust and sustainable PIC.
About the speaker
Kim Finney is the Manager of the Australian Antarctic Data Centre and current Chief Officer of the SCAR Standing Committee on Antarctic Data Management (SC-ADM). She has over 20 years experience in applying information management technologies to both small and large-scale scientific data management problems. She is also a member of the Australian Academy of Science, National Committee For Data in Science (NCDS).
In 2004 Kim was instrumental in establishing an Australian Ocean Data Centre Joint Facility (AODC JF), a consortium of 6 federal government agencies (i.e. Defence, Bureau of Meteorology, CSIRO, Australian Institute of Marine Science, Geoscience Australia and the Australian Antarctic Division). The AODC JF is working towards establishing a virtual national marine data centre.