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Toward a New Era of Data Sharing Summary of the US-UK Scientific Forum on Researcher Access to Data (2024) / Chapter Skim
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4 Data for Net Zero, Biodiversity, and Climate Adaptation
Pages 27-34

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From page 27...
... As observations of the world become increasingly extensive and voluminous through digital technologies, researchers need to think in terms of systems, she said. Some of the issues involved in systems thinking include the following: • Technical: ˗ Integration of data across misaligned spatiotemporal resolutions and from different domains ˗ Data fusion -- qualitative and quantitative data structures ˗ Assimilation of real-time data • Operational and Societal: ˗ Data silos and ownership, to allow discovery ˗ Privacy and commercial aspects ˗ Security The nature and diversity of environmental data mean that new ways must be found to link them, which is complicated by the different structures of data sources, Neff observed.
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From page 28...
... "This gives us a model of what's possible when we bring new types of data together and what the opportunities are around the kinds of conversations that we're having in this room." The Environmental Costs of Data The environmental consequences of gathering, analyzing, storing, and sharing data are "striking," said Loïc Lannelongue, research associate in biomedical data science and green computing at the University of Cambridge. The global greenhouse gas emissions of data centers are an estimated 100 megatons of carbon dioxide equivalent per year, which is about the same as the emissions of U.S.
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From page 29...
... Lannelongue concluded with a quotation from the Royal Society's 2020 report Digital Technology and the Planet: Harnessing Computing to Achieve Net Zero. "Digital technologies developed and deployed in pursuit of net zero must be energy-proportionate -- i.e., they must bring environmental or societal benefits that outweigh their own emissions."3 From Tools to Trust CarbonPlan uses the best available science to increase the use of climate solutions that work and decrease the use of ones that do not work, said the organization's executive director Jeremy Freeman.
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From page 30...
... That's a big challenge for all of us." Grounding Indigenous Rights in Biodiversity Data Indigenous Peoples represent about 5 percent of the global population, but they steward about 20 percent of the total land base and 80 percent of global biodiversity, observed Lydia Jennings, a presidential postdoctoral fellow at Arizona State University and a research fellow at Duke University. Furthermore, contemporary stewardship practices encompass not only ecological data but also Traditional Ecological Knowledge; geospatial data; and air, soil, and water quality data.
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From page 31...
... "We all have a role within these data life cycles," she said. "Whether you're a community, an individual researcher, a data repository, or a funder, all of us have a role to support ethical Indigenous data governance practices." In response to a question about the CARE principles, Jennings observed that the principles were created to uphold Indigenous sovereignty, but "what has been really fascinating within this work has been how many people from other marginalized communities are coming forward and saying, ‘The CARE principles are some of the only data principles that bring back the people relationships to data.'" Perhaps with some modifications, she said, they could be applied to other populations, such as Black communities in the United States and other groups that want to share their data while protecting their rights.
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From page 32...
... Costs can be not only environmental harms but also harms incurred by Indigenous Peoples and local communities involved in research. An incentive to incorporate community perspectives is to require that authors from affected communities be included in published papers, said Jennings.
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From page 33...
... How do we overcome the challenges of linking such data sources? •  ringing people together across disciplines is required to tie economic data to environmental data to health B data to other forms of data.
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From page 34...
... That is why T metadata and annotation need to be done at the birth of the data, not after the fact. •  uilding tools, such as big data visualization tools, helps create the infrastructure for data stewardship.
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Key Terms

  • data sharing
  • environmental data
  • net zero
  • indigenous communities
  • care principles

  • indigenous data
  • data governance
  • data stewardship
  • environmentally sustainable
  • climate studies

  • computational science
  • public decision
  • economic data
  • environmental costs
  • achieve net

  • sustainable computational
  • carbon footprints
  • digital technology
  • dioxide equivalent
  • greenhouse gas

  • harnessing computing
  • regulatory apparatus
  • green algorithms
  • collective benefit
  • algorithms project

  • gas emissions
  • data indigenous
  • sharing data
  • ethical data
  • biomedical data


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