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Laying the Foundations for Global Transdisciplinary Integration of Data from the Physical Sciences and the Social Sciences

Lesley Wyborn1, Simon Cox2, Simon Hodson3 and Geoffrey Boulton4

1National Computational Infrastructure, ANU, Australia and Australian National Data Service, Australia2Land and Water, CSIRO, Australia3CODATA, Paris, France4University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, United Kingdom

nci.org.auC3DIS May 2018: Wyborn et al. ([email protected])© NCI Australia 2018

Geophysics ElevationBathymetryHimawariMODISLandsat

Geosciences DeVLMarine

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OGC Web Coverage Service

OPeNDAPOGC Web Processing

Service

NCI NERDIP DATA SERVICES

10 PB NCI NERDIP EARTH SYSTEMS, ENVIROMENTAL AND SOLID EARTH DATA COLLECTIONS

Serv

ice

sTe

chn

olo

gy

Numerical Weather

PredictionCMIP 5

eReefs

GeoServer

GSKY

THREDDSRasdaman

Open Data

AccessUsers

GeoNetwork Catalogue

NCI IndexDatabase

CS/WOpenSearch

EarthServer

HazardsModels

GPS

OGC Web Cov. Process

Service

The NCI National Research Data Platform


What are the agreed standards for Interfacing and sharing?

https://www.power-plugs-sockets.com/

https://www.power-plugs-sockets.com/


Defining the problem space – bridging the data tsunami

1. The internet of today gives researchers unprecedented online access to data, tools and compute resources and there is now an unrivalled opportunity for global research challenges to be addressed using distributed data and compute resources.

2. More importantly, researchers from low to middle income countries can now participate.

3. However, varying and incompatible data standards are used across the different disciplines, and there is inadequate definition of scientific vocabularies needed to categorise observed phenomena across multiple languages, making scientific integration impossible.

4. Hence integration of diverse data can generally only be achieved in closely allied fields.

Source: http://www.tsunami.org/images/student/art/hokusai.jpg

http://www.tsunami.org/images/student/art/hokusai.jpg


The Internet has impacted on how we do our science

• There is a growing need to share data, information and services across multiple science disciplines and beyond

• Increasingly:• digital data collections are being re-used and re-

purposed by much broader communities

• data are being accessed by scientists who do not necessarily have the same level of discipline expertise as the originator

• solving the grand challenges facing our planet will require that data will be integrated from globally distributed sources


The key to global data integration is standardisation of vocabularies

• More than ever, we need to be aligning our science information with the semantic web technologies and linked open data principles…

• Which requires the formalization, publication and maintenance of controlled vocabularies and similar reference data.

• However• there are too many of vocabularies

• they are rarely harmonised

Source: http://www.mgmyers.com/assets/world_in_hands.jpg

http://www.mgmyers.com/assets/world_in_hands.jpg


Enter ICSU/CODATA

• CODATA is sponsored by the International Council For Science (ICSU) and is concerned with improving the quality, reliability, management, and accessibility of data of importance to all fields of science and technology

• Traditionally CODATA provides for example, the scientific and technological communities with a self-consistent set of internationally recommended values of the basic constants and conversion factors of physics and chemistry

• In the digital age, could CODATA be the one to provide much needed governance and coordination on digital scientific data standards in the rapidly expanding data deluge?

• ICSU, CODATA, and the International Social Science Council (ISSC) are developing a project that will substantially increase the capacity of the international scientific community to achieve rigorous, transdisciplinary integration of data. This will be a long-term, decadal initiative that has the potential to fundamentally enhance the capacity of science in the 21st century.


Our data must enable transdisciplinary research

Trans What?????


• Researchers work within a single discipline or data silo with all

participants using the same standard and hence no

reformatting or translation of data is required

Intradisciplinary

Intradisciplinary


Multidisciplinary

• Researchers from different discipline silos work together and share

knowledge and results, but are not actually integrating at the data

level:

• Outputs are combined at the research paper/report level

Multidisciplinary


Cross-disciplinary

• Researchers participating on a project to integrate data

across the groups decide to reformat their datasets to a

single agreed suite of specific standards and formats

Cross-disciplinary


Interdisciplinary

Researchers from each domain integrate their data using customized

brokers that cross walk between the different domain silos:

the data of each participant remains unchanged in the back-end

Interdisciplinary


Transdisciplinary

• We need data to be born connected to international standards that

enable online interaction across the discipline boundaries and beyond

academia….

Transdisciplinary


More in the ICSU/ISSU/CODATA initiative

The project involves 2 major strands of work:1. Strand 1 involves projects related to 3-4 global challenges: infectious disease

outbreaks , disaster risk reduction, resilient cities, and possibly agriculture. These were chosen as major issues where relevant data is accessible, where data integration is a tractable objective, and where there are existing communities of practice willing to collaborate.

2. Strand 2 will seek to support those disciplines of science that have not yet developed the standards (vocabularies, ontologies, etc) necessary for effective data integration. Formalisation of the discipline-specific vocabularies is an essential prerequisite for integration of data from different disciplines.


Scientific members of CODATA

1. International Astronomical Union (IAU)• Working Group on Astronomical Data

2. International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC)

3. International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP)

4. International Union of Biological Sciences (IUBS)

5. International Geographical Union (IGU)

6. International Union of Crystallography (IUCr)

7. International Union of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (IUBMB)

8. International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS)• Commission for the Management and Application of Geoscience Information

9. International Union of Psychological Science (IUPsyS)

10.International Union of Pure and Applied Biophysics (IUPAB)

11.International Union of Nutritional Sciences (IUNS)

12.International Union of Basic and Clinical Pharmacology (IUPHAR)

13.International Union of Immunological Societies (IUIS)

14.International Union of Microbiological Societies (IUMS)

15.International Union of Soil Science (IUSS)

16.International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics (IUGG)• Commission for Data and Information

Data Groups/Commissions

http://www.iau.org/

http://www.iupac.org/dhtml_home.html

http://www.iupap.org/

http://www.iubs.org/

http://www.igu-net.org/

http://www.iucr.ac.uk/welcome.html

http://www.iubmb.unibe.ch/

http://www.iugs.org/

http://aix1.uottawa.ca/~iupsys/

http://www.iupab.org/

http://www.monash.edu.au/IUNS/

http://www.iuphar.org/

http://www.hhpub.com/journals/immunologist/

http://www.iums.org/

http://www.icsu.org/membership/SUM/iuss.html

http://www.iugg.org/


CODATA Task Group for coordinating data standards amongst the Scientific Unions

http://www.codata.org/task-groups/coordinating-data-standards

Chairs:1. Xiaogang (Marshall)

Ma University of Idaho

2. Lesley Wyborn3. Simon Cox

http://www.codata.org/task-groups/coordinating-data-standards


Want to learn more?

For more information, contact Simon Hodson, CODATA Executive Director, at: [email protected].

Or Lesley Wyborn ([email protected] )

Or Simon Cox ([email protected] )

mailto:[email protected]



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