The Research Data Alliance Creating the culture and technology for an international data infrastructure Mark A. Parsons Managing Director, RDA/United States Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute!! AGU Town Hall Meeting San Francisco, California 9 December 2013 Unless otherwise noted, the slides in this presentation are licensed by Mark A. Parsons under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License
All of society s grand challenges require diverse (often large) data to to be shared and integrated across cultures, scales, and technologies.
Research Data Alliance Vision Researchers and innovators openly share data across technologies, disciplines, and countries to address the grand challenges of society.! Mission RDA builds the social and technical bridges that enable open sharing of data.!
We need to start thinking about software in a way more like how we think about building bridges, dams, and sewers.! Dan Bricklin, Software That Lasts 200 Years http://www.bricklin.com/200yearsoftware.htm
Dynamics of Infrastructure Edwards, et al. 2007 Understanding Infrastructure: Dynamics, Tensions, and Design. Infrastructures become ubiquitous, accessible, reliable, and transparent as they mature. Staged evolution system-building, characterized by the deliberate and successful design of technology-based services. technology transfer across domains and locations results in variations on the original design, as well as the emergence of competing systems. Finally, a process of consolidation characterized by gateways that allow dissimilar systems to be linked into networks.
Not what, but When is infrastructure?
Not what, but When and Who is infrastructure?
Deliverables that make data work Create - Adopt - Use Adopted code, policy, infrastructure, standards, or best practices that enable data sharing Harvestable efforts that can eliminate a roadblock in 12-18 months of collaborative work Efforts that have substantive applicability to groups within the data community but may not apply to all Efforts that can start today RDA Principles Openness Consensus Balance Harmonization Community Driven Non-profit
RDA Organizational Framework
RDA Organizational Framework Seeking full time Secretary General!
Africa 2% South America Austral-pacific 1% 4% Asia 3% Other 7% Private 10% Map courtesy traveltip.org Europe 41% North America 49% Government 20% Academia 63% Distribution of 1,057 Individual RDA Members in 55 Countries 6 December 2013
RDA Plenary 2 -- September 16-18, Washington D.C. -- 3 days of Peace, Love and Data!15 RDA Plenary 2 368 participants from 23 countries and all sectors All-hands stakeholder talks and RDA working meeting Data Citation Summit convened by DataCite, CODATA/ICSTI, Force11, ESIP, DCC, etc. to create a common agenda ~5000 tweets over 3 days Summary in this month s D-Lib Magazine http://dx.doi.org/10.1045/november2013-parsons Fran Berman
Next Plenary Dublin, Ireland 26-28 March 2014 hosted by Australia and Ireland Theme: Data sharing community - playing your part https://rd-alliance.org/rda-thirdplenary-meeting.html
2013 Pecoff Studios Inc Plenary 4 Amsterdam September 2014 More info to come
SCIENCE APPLICATIONS: Toxico- genomics Structural Biology Biodiversity Taxon (GNA) Marine Data Harmoniza@on COMMUNITY NEEDS Community Capability Profiles Community Engagement Cloud in dev. countries BASE INFRASTRUCTURE: Data Founda>on & Terminology Prac>cal Policy Wheat data Interoperability Agriculture IG Digital Prac@ces in history & ethnography Materials Data Management REFERENCE & SHARING Dynamic Data Cita>on Standard Language Codes Legal Interoperability Metadata Directory PID Infor Types Data Type Registries STEWARDSHIP: Research Data Provenance Cer@fica@on of Digital Repositories Preserva@on Services Long Tail Research Data Publishing data Trusted repositories Metadata IG Big Data Analy@cs Brokering Frameworks Working and Interest Groups
SCIENCE APPLICATIONS: Toxico- genomics Structural Biology Biodiversity Taxon (GNA) Marine Data Harmoniza@on COMMUNITY NEEDS Community Capability Profiles Community Engagement Cloud in dev. countries BASE INFRASTRUCTURE: Data Founda>on & Terminology Prac>cal Policy Wheat data Interoperability Agriculture IG Digital Prac@ces in history & ethnography Materials Data Management REFERENCE & SHARING Dynamic Data Cita>on Standard Language Codes Legal Interoperability Metadata Directory PID Info Types Data Type Registries STEWARDSHIP: Research Data Provenance Cer@fica@on of Digital Repositories Preserva@on Services Long Tail Research Data Publishing data Trusted repositories Metadata IG Big Data Analy@cs Brokering Frameworks Working and Interest Groups
Organizational Partners key linkages Organizational Assembly = Organizational Members and Affiliates. Organizational Advisory Board will represent Organizational Assembly to Council! Current Status: 28 Organizations expressed interest in Membership 7 Organizations expressed interest in Affiliation Next 6 months Firm up model for Affiliates (how many, how substantive should the interaction be? How do they differ from members? Do they?) Complete creation of legal entity to receive subscriptions for Organizational Members Elect Organizational Advisory Board at Plenary 3 Image courtesy anybots.com
Regional RDAs RDA/United States, Australian National Data Service, RDA/Europe, Implement RDA deliverables locally and enhance adoption. Ensure regional or national issues are addressed globally. Support plenaries and support attendance at plenaries.
Get involved! Join RDA as an individual member supporting our principles at http://rd-alliance.org Join as an Organizational Member (nominal fee) or an Organizational Affiliate (jointly sponsored efforts). Initiate or join an Interest Group Propose or join a Working Group Attend the RDA Plenaries Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success. Henry Ford
Info: enquiries@rd-alliance.org @resdatall
Questions to the panel How might the Earth and space sciences take advantage of RDA? Why do geosciences need RDA? Do they? We have ESSI, ESIP, GEOSS, etc. What are some of the key Earth and space science informatics issues that could benefit from the perspectives of other disciplines? Correspondingly, what might geoinformatics teach other disciplines. Can we determine a return on investment for engagement in collaborative, cross-disciplinary, organizations like RDA? What are some of the key organizations that need to be involved in RDA from a Geoscience perspective? Why?