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Strategic Plan 2004-2010

5. Data and Information Management

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The third of SCAR’s five main objectives is to facilitate free and unrestricted access to Antarctic scientific data and information. To meet this objective SCAR will take the following strategic approach:

  1. encourage that maximum use is made of all available data;
  2. encourage the development and operation of appropriate mechanisms to facilitate the collection, storage, retrieval and dissemination of data and information for the common good; and
  3. encourage the community to ensure that these mechanisms are effective.

To ensure that the scientific (user) community gets what it needs in the way of data and information will require the development of a SCAR data and information strategy, an exercise that will be undertaken jointly with COMNAP, using the SCAR-COMNAP Joint Committee on Antarctic Data Management (JCADM) and the Steering Committee for Antarctic Data Management (STADM) and other existing structures as appropriate. Development of that strategy will have to bear in mind the following observations.

5.1 Data And Information Management

Meeting the increasingly complex, multidisciplinary and multinational challenges of today’s Antarctic science, especially in the global context, requires access to an extensive base of scientific data and information. With the rapidly increasing volumes of data being provided by satellite and in situ systems, one of the most useful services SCAR can provide to the scientific community is a comprehensive and integrated high level data and information management system to facilitate high quality, interdisciplinary, pan-Antarctic science. Effective data and information management makes sound economic sense, adding value to data that were extremely costly to collect, by making them available to the wider community for multiple investigations. With the advent of advanced numerical modelling of weather, climate and ice systems, and the need to predict the behaviour of those systems on short time scales, it has become essential to obtain and share many kinds of data more or less in real-time from multiple sources.

SCAR has always encouraged the free and unrestricted exchange of scientific data (at no more than the cost of supplying it), which is consistent with Article III-c of the Treaty, with the data policies of ICSU and of intergovernmental organisations like the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) and the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO), and indeed with the policies of many individual Treaty Parties. In these days of electronic storage of information, and electronic communications, data need not be physically exchanged, but rather made available through provision of access to databases - provided that information is available about where the databases are and what they hold (the metadata).

As SCAR holds no data of its own, its policy is to encourage good practice in data management, such as the use of common formats for data exchange and metadata, and the implementation of open standards-based interfaces to facilitate access to databases. For example, in order to assist the promulgation of international standards SCAR has Class ‘A’ liaison status with the International Standards Organisation Technical Committee 211 on Geographical Information (ISO TC211).

There is no single centralised Antarctic database. Instead, SCAR and COMNAP members have a wide range of data and database systems, information about which can be obtained by anyone from a one-stop-shop, the Antarctic Master Directory (AMD), a web based metadata catalogue populated with contributions from National Antarctic Data Centres.

The SCAR-COMNAP Joint Committee on Antarctic Data Management (JCADM) advises SCAR and COMNAP on all aspects of Antarctic data matters. JCADM’s activities are overseen by the Steering Committee for Antarctic Data Management (STADM). JCADM comprises the managers of each National Antarctic Data Centre (NADC), or relevant national contacts if a NADC has not yet been established. It enlists NADCs and helps them document their national Antarctic datasets through the creation and use of index (metadata) records. The result is the Antarctic Master Directory (AMD), which is part of the Global Change Master Directory (GCMD), and thus provides a link to global datasets. Data within some NADCs is made available through new Internet Web service initiatives, such as the Global Biodiversity Information Facility.

Together the AMD and the NADCs comprise the Antarctic Data Directory System (ADDS), development of which is coordinated by JCADM. The ADDS is intended to provide an index for access to all Antarctic data, no matter where or how they are stored. The beneficiaries of the System are SCAR and COMNAP members, the broader research community, and the public.

Aside from storage in NADCs, some, but not all, Antarctic data are stored in ICSU’s World Data Centres (WDCs). Other data may be stored in National Ocean Data Centres (NODCs) coordinated by the IOC’s International Ocean Data and Information Exchange Programme (IODE), or in the National Meteorological Data Centres coordinated by the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO). SCAR needs a mechanism to ensure that connections can be made easily to and between these different databases

The ATCM itself has acknowledged

  1. that it is difficult to get investigators to provide data to NADCs;
  2. that some Treaty Parties have not nominated NADCs; and
  3. that data are not being managed by all so that free access is enabled.

For that reason, ATCM Resolution 4 (1998) recommended that:

SCAR will urge Members to fully implementation and support the Antarctic Data Directory System, which is essential to maximize the value of the data being collected in Antarctica, and to report on progress at biennial SCAR meetings.

Recognising that geographic location is vital to integrating and communicating Antarctic science data and information, SCAR should include in its data and information management strategy consideration of the role of Geospatial Information. To improve its use of geospatial information, SCAR aims to encourage the establishment of an Antarctic Spatial Data Infrastructure (ANTSDI) including fundamental geographic information products and related policies, specifications and enabling technologies. The ANTSDI is the main goal of the SCAR Expert Group on Geographical Information, which is another key element in the management and use of Antarctic data and information. Full implementation of and support for the Antarctic Spatial Data Infrastructure will be essential to ensure the spatial integrity of data collected and to be able to make use of the power of geographic location in data discovery and retrieval, data mining, and data analysis.

Generic advice on data and information management that SCAR should consider in developing its data and information management strategy is available from several sources, including a recent report by ICSU’s Priority Area Assessment on Scientific Data and Information, which is available from the ICSU web site (http://www.icsu.org/). Data quality will be one of the key issues to be addressed in developing the SCAR strategy on data and information management.

As part of the development of its data and information management strategy SCAR should commission, with COMNAP, an external review of JCADM by data and information management experts. Particular attention should be paid, among other things, to the ways in which JCADM makes its capabilities and products known to the community, the extent to which its products ands services meet the needs of that community, and its interactions with the Expert Group on Geographical/Geospatial Information. SCAR should also require the Expert Group on Geographical Information (EGGI) to liaise closely with the potential users of its products, and particularly with COMNAP, to ensure that maximum us is made of its products and that those products are adapted to fully meet user requirements.

To ensure that data and information management are considered at the highest level, a Vice President will carry responsibility for the data and information management portfolio.

SCAR plays an important role in providing access to key databases, most of which are listed in Annex 7.

SCAR Delegates have made several recommendations about the need for particular improvements in the collection and exchange of certain kinds of data or information, especially:

Yet more efforts are needed to see that the required improvements come about.

As a new initiative, the Life Sciences SSG is creating a Marine Biodiversity Information Network (MarBIN) to compile, disseminate, and integrate information on Antarctic marine biodiversity for scientific, monitoring, management and conservation purposes.

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