The authors appreciate the support received from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) under Contract NNG13HQ04C for the Socioeconomic Data and Applications

Distributed Active Archive Center (DAAC).

Copyright 2016. The Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York.This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

NASA Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC): Challenges and Accomplishments

Robert S. Chen1,, Robert R. Downs2, Alex de Sherbinin3

Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN), Columbia University,

1bchen@ciesin.columbia.edu, 2rdowns@ciesin.columbia.edu

3adesherbinin@ciesin.columbia.edu

Prepared for Presentation to the 2016 World Data System Forum 11 September 2016, Denver CO USA

WDS Catalogue of Criteria Spotlight:Relevant External Experts to Provide Advice and Guidance

SEDAC User Working GroupSEDAC data development and dissemination activities are guided by the SEDAC User WorkingGroup (UWG), which provides advice to the SEDAC leadership on efforts to meet currentstrategic objectives and to identify and assess opportunities for developing and disseminatingdata products and services to meet the needs of the communities served.

SEDAC UWG Practices• Meets at least annually to review progress and suggest improvements;• Reviews strategic plans and objectives;• Assesses candidate data products and services; and • Reviews development and dissemination plans for data product and services.

SEDAC UWG Contributions• Provides quality control and prioritization for data products and services;• Ensures feedback from key user communities and helps identify evolving user needs;• Serves as source of expertise on science, data management, and outreach;• Helps document and validate value proposition of interdisciplinary data integration.

Advice for Other Data Centers and Extent that Practices are Transferrable• Recruit representatives from relevant science and user communities to serve on UWG;• Establish staggered terms of service to provide continuity over time;• Identify clear terms of reference, focusing on strategic advice and guidance;• Utilize UWG members as resource to improve data and services and community relations.

Established Procedures to Assign Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) to Data

Meeting the ChallengeRecognizing the need to provide persistent unique identifiers that could be included inrecommended citations for SEDAC data products and accepted by publishers for references inpublications, SEDAC began assigning Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) to data in 2014 and hasassigned more than 240 DOIs to data products that it disseminates.

Accomplishments from DOI Procedures• Routinely assigning DOIs to data products.• Using DOIs to link data products to other data, documentation, and published resources.• DOIs are appearing in references that cite the use of SEDAC data in publications.

Recent SEDAC Challenges and Successes

Simplified Rights Declarations for Data Products Disseminated

Meeting the ChallengeRecognizing the need for data users from multiple disciplines to understand the rightsassociated with each data product disseminated, SEDAC began providing simple rightsdeclaration statements that concisely describe the rights for using each data product. SEDACdata originate from diverse sources and some data sets are not in the pubic domain.

Accomplishments from Simplified Rights Declarations• Routinely assigning rights declaration statements to data products.• Clearly stating the rights that are associated with the use of each data product.

Standardized Template for Documentation of Data Products

Meeting the ChallengeRecognizing the need to ensure that data products are described so that users can determinewhether the data are appropriate for their purposes, SEDAC has developed a newdocumentation template to ensure that data products are described in a consistent mannerto improve understandability by users and potential users of the data.

Accomplishments from Standardized Documentation Template• Describing data products in a consistent manner.• Providing documentation that can be understood by users from various disciplines.

SEDAC, the Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center, is one of theDistributed Active Archive Centers (DAACs) in the Earth Observing System Dataand Information System (EOSDIS) of the U.S. National Aeronautics and SpaceAdministration. Focusing on human interactions in the environment, SEDAC hasthe mission to develop and operate applications that support the integration ofsocioeconomic and earth science data and to serve as an "Information Gateway"between earth sciences and social sciences.

http://sedac.ciesin.columbia.edu/

SEDAC Collection Spotlight:Gridded Population of the World, Version 4 (GPWv4)

SEDAC Tools and Services Spotlight:Release of the HazPop Mobile Application and

Updated Population Estimation Service

Meeting the ChallengeRecognizing that users need customized data services available throughalternative interfaces such as mobile applications, SEDAC has developed amobile app aimed at users who need better understanding of thepopulation and infrastructure potentially exposed to hazard events. TheHazPop app, available for free from Apple’s iTunes store for iOS phones andtablets, provides basic visualization, analysis, and location servicesfunctions, including the ability to obtain an estimate of the populationresiding within a user-specified radius of a hazard event, major dam orreservoir, nuclear power plant, or other point of interest. An Android versionis under development.

The HazPop app and the SEDAC Hazards Mapper utilize the PopulationEstimation Service (PES), which supports spatial queries against SEDAC’sGridded Population of the World (GPW) dataset, through the open WebProcessing Service (WPS) and representational state transfer (REST)specifications. A new version of the PES that accesses version 4 of GPW hasjust been released.

Accomplishments from SEDAC Tools and Services• Demonstrating utility of mobile applications and use of location services.• Supporting open web services that can be accessed via multiple clients. http://sedac.ciesin.columbia.edu/mapping/popest/gpw-v4/https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/hazards-population-mapper/id1092168898?mt=8

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/mailto:11bchen@ciesin.columbia.edumailto:2rdowns@ciesin.columbia.edumailto:adesherbinin@ciesin.columbia.eduhttp://sedac.ciesin.columbia.edu/http://sedac.ciesin.columbia.edu/mapping/popest/gpw-v4/https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/hazards-population-mapper/id1092168898?mt=8

NASA Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC): �Challenges and Accomplishments��Robert S. Chen1,, Robert R. Downs2, Alex de Sherbinin3 ��Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN), �Columbia University,��1bchen@ciesin.columbia.edu, � � 2rdowns@ciesin.columbia.edu��3adesherbinin@ciesin.columbia.edu��Prepared for Presentation to the 2016 World Data System Forum �11 September 2016, Denver CO USA