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Biography |
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Ilya Zaslavsky is director of Spatial Information Systems Lab at the San Diego Supercomputer Center, University of California San Diego. His research focuses on distributed information management systems and spatial and temporal data integration. Zaslavsky received his PhD from the University of Washington (1995), and earlier a PhD equivalent from the Russian Academy of Sciences (1990). He has been leading design and technical development in several large cyberinfrastructure projects supported by the US National Science Foundation, including the national-scale EarthCube and Hydrologic Information System. He is a co-chair of the OGC/WMO Hydrology Domain Working Group which develops international standards for water data.
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Abstract |
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Global environmental information and knowledge sharing for sustainability |
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Global environmental information and knowledge sharing for sustainability
Shared understanding of the dynamics of human-natural systems is one of the pillars of environmental sustainability. As models of environmental systems become increasingly complex and multi—disciplinary, and their development involves larger and more diverse data sets, it becomes critical to establish common mechanisms for sharing environmental information among researchers, across disciplinary and geographic boundaries. To make complex sustainability assessments possible and develop adaptation and mitigation strategies, data must be shared in a manner that is efficient, transparent and unambiguous. We will highlight several ongoing efforts to foster information sharing among different geoscience communities, at scales from local to national and global. One such effort is the EarthCube initiative supported by the United States National Science Foundation. Its goal is to develop infrastructure for sharing information and knowledge across domains to support advanced research and education in the Earth Sciences. Several projects within this initiative focus on cross-domain interoperability, to ensure that structurally and semantically different data from multiple data repositories can be efficiently discovered, interpreted, accessed and integrated into composite data resources for analysis and modeling. We will demonstrate one cross-domain interoperability project from this initiative, called CINERGI (Community Inventory of EarthCube Resources for Geoscience Interoperability) which makes it possible to discover multiple types of data resources across information systems without sacrificing data characteristics that are essential for each domain. Another effort focuses on global water data sharing, through development of international standards for water data exchange. The WaterML 2 suite of specifications is being developed by the Hydrology Domain Working Group of the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), an international group of experts working on standardization of water data. This work resulted in several adopted international standards that are being increasingly used around the world for sharing hydrologic time series and rating curve information, while work on standardizing information about hydrologic features, groundwater, and water quality is ongoing. The newly established Global Water Information Interest Group of the international Research Data Alliance (RDA) will specifically focus on implementation of these standards through sustainable water data sharing infrastructure, and on coordination with advanced information system development in other science domains. Finally, we will present a non-profit project called Global Forest Link which brings together high school students from several countries. The students engage in collecting, joint analysis and sharing of information about local forests, and relate these data with global satellite-based monitoring of forest conditions available through the Global Forest Watch project. We will present outcomes of the pilot phase of the project and discuss strategies for a cross-country dialog around global forest sustainability issues. Engaging the young generation in global-scale environmental sustainability research from the start, using advanced analysis and visualization software and both global and local datasets, fosters development of global citizens who combine environmental awareness and technical knowledge.
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