A Case Study on the Geocuration of Multidisciplinary Data Products and Services

Abstract:

Data curation at an interdisciplinary scientific data center that focuses on human interactions in the environment provides opportunities for the geocuration of data from diverse natural, social, health, and engineering disciplines to offer data products and services to users representing a variety of fields of inquiry, levels of expertise, and vocations. Addressing pressing issues such as disaster risk management, climate change, resource depletion, and environment-conflict interactions requires accessing and integrating different types of data from diverse sources, often collected with quite disparate methods, scales, levels of uncertainty and quality, and access and usage rights. Particular challenges for geocuration include identifying relevant data sets from diverse sources, assessing their suitability for integration, conversion to forms that enhance interoperability, obtaining suitable access and usage rights for data, documentation of methods in ways understandable to diverse users, and evaluation of the effectiveness of geocuration efforts. We describe here a number of efforts to develop geocurated data collections in such areas as environmental indicators, land use/land cover change, and human settlements and infrastructure. In addition to describing the incremental development of these collections, we examine how planning and anticipation of the needs of user communities are important to the collection development process. We assess the development and continuing enhancement of the cyberinfrastructure and capabilities needed to support efficient and effective geocuration throughout the data lifecycle. We conclude with selected observations and lessons learned from the development of these geocurated collections.