SEAD: SUSTAINABLE ENVIRONMENT-ACTIONABLE DATA

Leveraging Existing Cyberinfrastructure for Long-Term Sustainability

Margaret Hedstrom-University of Michigan

James Myers-Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Robert H. McDonald-Indiana University

Research Data Access and Preservation Summit 3.22.12

New Orleans, LA

#OCI0940824

SEAD TEAM

University of Michigan: Margaret Hedstrom (UM PI), Ann Zimmerman (Co-PI and Project Manager), George Alter, Bryan Beecher, Charles Severance, Karen Woollams, Jude Yew. Indiana University: Beth Plale (IU PI), Katy Borner, Robert H. McDonald, Kavitha Chandrasekar, Robert Ping, Stacy Kowalczyk, Robert Light. University of Illinois: Praveen Kumar (UIUC PI), Rob Kooper, Luigi Marini, Terry McLaren. Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute: Jim Myers (RPI PI), Ram Prasanna Govind Krishnan, Lindsay Todd, Adam Wilson.

SEAD CYBERINFRASTRUCTURE

• An international resource for sustainability science

• Novel technical and business approaches to supporting the long-tail of research data

• Lifecycle support: actionable data services integrated with curation and preservation infrastructure

SUSTAINABILITY RESEARCH IS CENTRAL TO SOLVING MANY OF SOCIETY’S MOST CRITICAL CHALLENGES

• Local processes aggregating to produce global consequences

• Multiple time scales• Coupling of natural and human systems• Interacting systems-of-systems requiring

multidisciplinary understanding• Environmental – Economic - Social

DATA CHALLENGES IN SUSTAINABILITY RESEARCH• Many dimensions, many coordinate systems,

many scales, many formats, a long-tail of providers and users, …

ENABLING SUSTAINABILITY RESEARCH

• Discovering and integrating data are a major barrier!• Organize data geospatially, temporally, and thematically

• Understanding the quality and applicability of data is a significant challenge!• Provide provenance, literature connections, QA/QC

information, and other evidence about the data

• Collaborating across projects to coordinate data collection and analysis to address inter-disciplinary issues is a further barrier!• Provide ways for groups to collaborate and share data directly

during active projects

BUT...

• Managed Data storage and services are expensive!• Begging for metadata doesn’t work!• Curation and preservation are time consuming!• The long-tail is not standardized!• Data collections are always missing something valuable!• Data models evolve!• Cyberinfrastructure is obsolete by the time you build it!• Building community as you leverage cyberinfrastructure

SEAD: LEVERAGING EXISTING RESOURCES

• Cyberinfrastructure• IU Data Capacitor/HPC Capabilities• UIUC/NCSA HPC Capabilities• Rensselaer CCNI Capabilities

• Repositories• UM Deep Blue• IU ScholarWorks• ICPSR Repository• UIUC IDEALS

KEY QUESTIONS

• What could SEAD capture when?• A lot, as its created!• Take advantage of semantic approaches

• How can SEAD provide direct value to data producers, users, and curators?• Single mechanism for managing project and reference

data!• Value-added network-effect altmetrics services!

• How can SEAD lower barriers and reduce/realign costs?• web 2.0, 3.0, and social computing!

SEAD 18 MONTH PROTOTYPE TARGETS FOR CYBERINFRASTRUCTURE

• Active and Social Content Curation• Pilot Active Content Repository, VIVO deployments• Exemplar services for Data Ingest, Discovery, Re-use,

Curation

• CI for Long-term Access• Data model, protocol design/development• Pilot Federated Repository infrastructure

SEAD CI QUICKVIEW

• SEAD will quickly build a repository and data services infrastructure for

sustainability research that can be responsively adapted based on

community feedback – Community Agile Development

• SEAD will leverage existing tools and emerging practices to dramatically

enhance the interactions of researchers and data librarians – Active

Curation

• SEAD’s focus on the long-tail will force an emphasis on ease-of-use and

low costs that is critical for long-term sustainability – Leverage Existing

Institution Resources for Long-term Access

• SEAD will leverage experiences in the sustainability research

community to provide guidance for other long-tail communities making

the transition to an interdisciplinary, systems-oriented approach to

research – Sustainability and Resource Growth Partnership and

Collaboration

THANK YOU

For more on SEAD go to:

http://sead-data.net

Follow on Twitter @SEADdatanet

#OCI0940824