Environment Climate Data Sweden
– A Swedish research infrastructure
Thomas Klein, Barry Broman, Cecilia Bennet and the ECDS-team
1. Why ECDS is needed
2. What ECDS can do for you
3. Way forward
1. Why ECDS?
Increasing environment and climate data needs
Earth is a system of coupled systems
Increasing scientific
complexity and
increasing data needs
[Source: GEO]
Any single problem requires many data sets
Any single data set serves many applications
Data sharing – a core element of
good scientific practice
“Open access to such data:
 reinforces open scientific inquiry,
 encourages diversity of analysis and opinion,
 promotes new research and new types of
research,
 allows the verification of previous results,
 makes possible the testing of new or
alternative hypotheses and methods of
analysis,
 …” (ICSU, 2009)
“Individual scientists have
… a collective
responsibility to maximize
the benefit and minimize
the misuse of science for
society as a whole”
(ICSU, 2008)
Barriers to full, open and trouble-free data access
Difficulties to find and
share relevant data
A common picture
even in Sweden
Report to VR:
Eklundh, 2008
Problems with use
and integration of data
Restrictive/complicated
datapolicies
Need a research
infrastructure for
environment and
climate data
2. What ECDS can do for the scientific
community
ECDS




Initiated by VR
Funded by VR (80%) and SMHI (20%)
Initial period 2009-2013
Collaboration with NSC on data storage
Helps to find and
share data
Facilitates use and
integration of data
Encourages open
data access
Full, open and
trouble-free access
to environment and
climate data
ECDS technical infrastructure
Based on
GeoNetwork
OpenSource
University X
Web interface
Metadata
catalogue
Non-digital data
Research
group Y
Based on user
requirement
dialogue with
Swedish scientists
”Yellow pages”
Data re-use:
for environment
Science building
upon science
and climate
data
Data storage
at ”Swestore”
ECDS – technical challenges
 Metadata profile
 based on ISO 19115:2003,
 compliant with INSPIRE and
Swedish Geodata
 Data storage capacity “Swestore”
 Planned: Seamless integration
with other portals (harvesting)
 Planned: Services, e.g. data
visualization, analysis, processing
 Data formats and tools
 Interoperability
 Standards are key, but are
developing (e.g. INSPIRE)
 Long-term accessibility of
data a challenge
 Resources
 Policies and
responsibilities
www.ecds.se
Contact ECDS
Get an account
to publish data
Get support
Access data others
are sharing with you
ECDS portal:
Search with thematic,
temporal, geographical
and free text constraints
Search environment
and climate data
Register environment
and climate data
Share your data
with others
helps to find and access environment
and climate data – an example
I need historical weather
information for Stockholm
for my research
Free text search
Search result
Look at the metadata to learn more
Metadata are a dataset’s
description and tell me
everything I need to know
Sections with contact
information in case you
want to ask people
ECDS recommends open
licenses such as CC-attribution
(you are free to use the data
but need to cite the author)
The metadata also tell me
where I can access the data
The URL generally leads to an external
resource. However, some data may also
be stored at the central ECDS data
repository at Swestore/SNIC.
The scientific quality is often documented
in an external peer-reviewed scientific
journal publication or report.
ECDS ensures the conformity of a
dataset’s description with the agreed
ECDS data documentation standard.
These are obviously very
interesting data of high
quality. I will try to access
them at the specified URL.
The external site itself can be a portal, a
collection or part of a collection of data.
In this example, the user can access a
wealth of complementary information.
Important: The site in the example offers
several selections and subselections, but
the user can easily see where to
download the data.
Excellent, homogenized monthly
mean temperatures for Stockholm
were exactly what I needed!
Now I can use these data in my
research and just need to cite the
author in my article!
Data sharing is a fantastic
concept: I really need to share my
own data in the same way!
helps to share environment and
climate data – an example
Now I want to make
some of my own data
available through ECDS.
1. Step: Get an account
2. Step: Login
4. Step: Choose template
5. Select ”Create”
3. Step: Select ”New metadata”
I need to fill in descriptive
information about my
dataset – that is easy!
Final step: ”Save and send to reviewer”
3. Way forward
Data sharing – What’s in it for you? (1)
Open data access is required by an
increasing number of research
funding agencies
 E.g., VR and FORMAS calls for
proposals
 Other research funding agencies
are likely to follow
 ECDS supports scientists with a
“data publication plan template”
Data sharing likely to be
required in your next projects
Data sharing – What’s in it for you? (2)
 Data sharers are cited much more
frequently than data protectionists
 Funding agencies put increasing
weight on data sharing in the
evaluation of applicants’ records
 Data sharing provides
opportunities for collaboration and
multidisciplinary research
Share your data and raise
your scientific profile!
Conclusions (1)
ECDS can
provide the
infrastructure
Scientists need
to provide the
content!
Conclusions (2)
Scientific data sharing
has low priority
compared to writing
articles, research
proposals, teaching, …
Research funding
agencies need to enforce
a paradigm shift by
providing incentives for
data sharing
Conclusions (3)
Scientists operate
within overarching
research environments
such as universities
Universities need to
support a paradigm shift
in data sharing by
encouraging open access
Conclusions (4)
The organisational
division into research
data and agency data is
irrelevant from a
problem-oriented
perspective.
Governmental agencies
need to adopt open data
sharing policies that
support science and
facilitate the generation of
societal benefits
Contact:
Web:
ecds@smhi.se
www.ecds.se