Several data coordination positions have been funded since the start of IPY. Who are they and what are they working on? Here’s what I know.

The US National Science Foundation is supporting part of me at NSIDC to help coordinate the overall IPYDIS including educational activities and to tie US activities into the international programme. This could be viewed as part of what many of us proposed back in 2005 in our coordination proposal .

The Norwegian Meteorological Institute is providing a data coordinator to focus on (near) real time and operational data. This effort is being led by Øystein Godøy.

Funding has been identified in Canada for another position to focus on the myriad Canadian activities and assist with the international effort. I don’t believe the position has been filled yet, but Ellsworth LeDrew, co-chair of the Canadian IPY Data Committee will know more.

Helen Campbell at the British Antarctic Survey reports that she is recruiting an IPY Data Coordinator.

What’s the status of these activities? Are there other data coordinators or focal points for certain countries, regions, disciplines? Please reply to this thread.

We should have a coordinator confab to coordinate the coordinators .

-m.

There is some additional activity on a national level in Norway. The Norwegian Meteorological Institute (METNO), Institute of Marine Research (HI), Norwegian Polar Institute (NPI) and NILU has applied for funding of a national coordination (DOKIPY) of the archives at the METNO, HI and NPI. NILU participates in this work as they have some large archives, but no specific public responsibility as the govermental insitutions. Through this project we aim to connect existing metadatabases and provide an overview of the national IPY activities at the metadata level. As funding is limited a full archive for all data is not possible, but it is the intention to cover the data types that are covered by the mandates of individual institutions.

IPY projects funded by the Norwegian Research Council has to submit a Data Management Plan within T0+3. This has to be amended yearly.  Hopefully these reports will be made available to the project. That will help tracking Norwegian IPY data.

No official answer to the application is received so far, but signals have been very positive.

The people involved so far in Norway are Helge Sagen at HI, Stein Tronstad at NPI, Aasmund Fahre Vik at NILU and Øystein Godøy at METNO.

Øystein showed me a copy of the Norwegian Data Management plans. Even in Norwegian, I could tell that it could be very useful. Are other countries requiring similar plans? If so, sharing these plans would make international tracking much more effective.

Unfortunately, the US doesn’t have consistent data management plans across IPY projects. There is a consistent approach for projects under NSF’s Arctic Observing Network (AON) Program, though, and this is a major IPY contribution.  The Cooperative Arctic Data and Information Service will be supporting these projects and distributed and compiled the results of a data questionnaire for the AON projects.

-m.

The UK-IPY Data Coordinator has now joined the AEDC, and she’ll be here for 1 year.  We have plans that the core of the role will be to:
- Ensure that all UK participants in IPY are fully aware of the IPY Data Policy
- Coordinate collection and submission of metadata for all UK-IPY data as soon as possible
- Work with each project to identify a suitable archive for all UK-IPY data
- Provide a central UK contact point for IPY data queries, and the IPYDIS

Depending on how much time this takes, we’d also like to support wider IPYDIS work.

I think it would be really useful for all the data coordinators to be in frequent contact.  Are there any plans for a workshop/meeting in the next few months - might EGU be a good place?

I’m glad to here the UK coordinator is on board. Rebecca, right?

I agree it would be good to meet. How about in St Petersburg? I’m not planning on going to EGU myself, but that shouldn’t stop others from getting together.

-m.

No, the new coordinator is Kathryn - think she’s in the process of signing up to the forum now.  Rebecca also works in the AEDC, and has been working on the Google Earth stuff for IPY.

I definately think we should have a get together at St Petersburg, but was hoping that the coordinators could all get together earlier than that as well… ?

Thanks to new or additional contributions from USA, Norway, Netherlands, Canada, UK, Spain and Sweden, it appears likely that the IPO will obtain sufficient resources to continue in operation at least until July 2010. We describe that time period as a conclusion and ‘hand-over’ period during which the IPO will help IPY end with maximum scientific impact, a comprehensive inventory of IPY data, a secure thriving community of future researchers and an effective enduring international polar education network, and will seek long-term partners to help sustain those activities.
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Ashley Madison