BELMONT FORUM E-INFRASTRUCTURES
AND DATA MANAGEMENT PROJECT
Updates and Next Steps to Deliver the final Community
Strategy and Implementation Plan
Maria Uhle
Promoting International Collaboration
through New Funding Opportunities
World’s leading funders of global environmental
change research and international science councils
Established to foster global environmental change research;
Initiated June 2009 by NSF and NERC, building on IGFA
The Belmont Challenge
To deliver knowledge needed for action to avoid and adapt to
detrimental environmental change, including extreme hazardous
events.
This requires:
 Assessments of risks, impacts and vulnerabilities, through regional
and decadal-scale analysis and prediction
 Information on the state of the environment, through advanced
observing systems
 Interaction of natural and social sciences
 Enhanced environmental information service providers to users
 Effective international coordination mechanisms
Collaborative Research Actions
 Collaborative Research Actions (CRAs) are implemented
to make progress against the Belmont Challenge and
promote international collaboration
 Address Belmont Challenge priorities
 Leverage’ existing investments through international added value
 Bring together new partnerships of natural scientists, social scientists,
and users
 Improve how funding agencies collaborate with each other and
develop new opportunities for research
E-infrastructures and Data Management CRA
“….the need to address global
environmental challenges requires a
more coordinated approach to the
planning, implementation, and
management of data, analytics and
E-Infrastructures” through
international collaboration.
- Belmont Forum, New Delhi, February 2013
Who’s involved?
 International Steering Committee (14 people)
 1 member per country or international organization
 Members lead six Work Packages (WPs) / working groups
 6 Work Packages (120 people)
 ~ 20 people per WP
 WP members composed of national delegations (~10 members per
country)
ASSEMBLY
120 + experts
 ~10 per country
 Divided into 6 Work Packages (WPs)
 end-user domain scientists
 computer and information scientists
 legal experts
 social scientists
Interim Report
September 2014
 Progress Report
 Preview of emerging findings, conclusions,
recommendations
 Short-term recommendations that the Belmont
Forum should consider implementing in 2015
 Assessment of what needs to be done to deliver the
final Community Strategy and Implementation Plan
Interim Report
 Actions that produce quick wins leading to recognizable results
 Strategic leverage points that make a large impact with little
funding or policy changes
 Analysis of funding mechanisms that best sustain einfrastructures
 Strategic community-building initiatives around data
infrastructures
 Process to engage the Belmont Forum in the co-design of future
CRAs to keep pace with changing global e-infrastructure
landscape
Findings and Emerging Conclusions
 There is a role for the Belmont Forum to:
 Foster good practice on sharing data in the scientific community
 Solicit, prioritize and develop use cases that employ user-driven approaches
that bring together environmental scientists, computer scientists, and data
centers
 Design and implement short courses to start to bridge skills gaps and promote
best practices
 Support and fund activities that increase awareness of data security and legal
issues
Emerging Recommendations
1. Establish e-Infrastructure Community Social Elements and
Coordination
2. Foster Active Data Management and Stewardship Principles
3. Provide Support for the Development of Case Studies and
Exemplars
Other recommendations and consequent actions to be determined
Community Strategy and Implementation Plan
Final Report Due June 30, 2015
 Vision that clearly expresses global e-infrastructure
needs, barriers and gaps
 Identify strategic science policies, outlining what can
be done better, in a multilateral way, to support
global change research
 Informs stakeholders
 Prioritizes action to address the interoperability challenges
 Integrates existing national and international research in order
to promote more holistic environmental support system
Project Updates
 Steering Committee will consider how each of the
recommendations and actions in the final report
contribute to improve reproducibility of science
 Steering Committee will develop data principles,
building on and leveraging what has already been done,
to put the actions and recommendations in the final
report into a strategic framework
Timeline
 December 13-14, 2014: Steering Committee Meeting at AGU Fall
Meeting
 January – March 2015: Work continues
 April 9-11, 2015: Steering Committee Meeting at Japan Science &
Technology Agency, Tokyo
 May 25 – June 15, 2015: Review of draft Final Report
 June 30, 2015: Final report submission to the Belmont Forum
Public consultation to follow final report delivery
New Knowledge Hub
www.bfe-inf.org
Interim Report is
available online