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Summary Successful management of data and information is critical to the success of the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP). Present data management for scientific research is barely adequate. The USGCRP requires a new system of data and information manage- ment to meet its needs. By "system" we mean the interconnected process of gathering, processing, evaluating, archiving, and distributing of data, products, and information. The existing environmental data management components have served reasonably well. However, many components necessary to meet the data and information challenge of the USGCRP are either inadequate or wholly lacking. New initiatives, such as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Earth Observing System, will generate an unprecedented amount of data for global change research. Existing components must be improved, restructured, or replaced. New components must be created, with existing institutions serving as models where appropriate. This report describes data and information management needs, reviews the status of existing components, gives a vision of how a global change data and information system might evolve, and proposes a strategy for future actions. That strategy is to build on the successes of the current data centers' infrastructure to achieve a data and information system in support of the USGCRP. A global change data and information system should be based on simple principles that result from an analysis of existing data center activities. Successful data systems or centers are those that combine data management with scientific use of the data. Users contribute to the development of the data system and provide ongoing feedback. A successful system involves the scientific community at all stages of development and operation. This report concludes that scientific community support for and participation in a global change data and information system are
2 SUMMARY critical. Without active scientific support, any data and information system is unlikely to meet the needs of the USGCRP. The key points made in this report and possible actions to implement them are as follows: 1. Investment in data and information management should be visibly driven by and accountable to the scientific objectives of the USGCRP. As actions to implement this strategy, the system should: ⢠Link data management with specific science projects. ⢠Identify responsibilities of individual researchers. ⢠Provide incentives for scientists producing validated datasets to submit them to archives. (Journal publication of datasets may prove effective.) ⢠Create integrated product teams involving a partnership between active scientists and data centers, responsible for all aspects of relevant data collection, quality assurance, product generation, product accuracy assessment, and product distribution. ⢠Provide for visiting scientists and postdoctoral positions at each of the major data centers on a continuing basis. 2. Data and information management must be adequately supported to ensure the success of the USGCRP. Existing national data centers are not adequately supported to service present users, much less the expanded user community and data needs that the global program will involve. Steps that might be taken are: ⢠Allocate, at a high administrative level, resources for data and information management as a substantial fraction of overall program cost. ⢠Provide direct support for the system. The first objective of the USGCRP is scientific understanding. Attempts to
SUMMARY 3 support a data and information management system through user fees are likely to prove ineffective and counterproductive. ⢠Scale the elements of a global change data and information system to the resources available and required to carry out its functions. Technical approaches need to be well matched in capability and cost to the uses of the system. ⢠Seek a balance between the resources allocated to a given activity and the overall needs and priorities of the total program. 3. The existing system of national data centers and academic and project data units provides a useful starting point for a distributed data and information management system. However, the system needs to be improved to: ⢠Provide adequate support to serve the expanded user community and data needs that the global program will involve. ⢠Cover all the disciplines necessary to address the entire range of global change issues. ⢠Strengthen the links between these various data and information activities into an effective national system. 4. The global change data and information system should provide for an evolving data management system and an expanding user base. Chapter 5 of this report presents a vision of how such an evolving system might look. The system should: ⢠Minimize impediments to data access. ⢠Identify key elements of the present data system that can be implemented today but that will not preclude evolution
4 SUMMARY in data types, algorithms, and products. Those elements should address the following functions cited in Chapter 5: ⢠Accept the responsibility for stewardship of global change datasets. ⢠Be driven by and accountable to scientists involved in global change research. ⢠Support developmental experiments with prototypes that help define functionality, technical and organizational approaches, and resource requirements. ⢠Require all primary data gatherers to supply relevant global change data to the appropriate archival center on a regular basis. 5. The system that is created should ensure that scientists can use the datasets effectively both at present and in future decades. To achieve this result, the system should: ⢠Preserve the data. ⢠Maintain a long-term capability to permit a scientist to locate global change datasets of interest. ⢠Compile and preserve dataset documentation (also called "metadata") together with original datasets. 6. The preparation of products and analyses is a needed and valuable function that should be an integral part of an effective data and information management system. Many of the existing components do not carry out the additional value-added analysis and information functions necessary to address global change. A global change data and information system should:
SUMMARY Prepare products and analyses both by the primary data gatherers and by scientists at data centers or at individual institutions. Ensure that validated products and their documentation go back into the data and information system.
