diversifying nsidc’s data professionals to tackle an ... · diversifying nsidc’s data...
Post on 16-Jan-2020
3 Views
Preview:
TRANSCRIPT
Diversifying NSIDC’s Data Professionals
to Tackle an Evolving Cryospheric Data Landscape
Heidi McCann and Donna J. Scott https://nsidc.org
SciDataCon, September 12, 2016
Story telling, Oral History usually placed
within a context. Can be powerful when told
the right way even outside its environment
Users are Arctic community members, non-
Arctic Indigenous community members,
researchers, teachers and the general public
Data are sensitive and not necessarily free
and open. Some stories are esoteric in nature.
Communities
NSIDC’s satellite and in-situ data sets
Users are cryospheric researchers with expert knowledge of data
sets
Data are free and open to the public
Services to work with the data have evolved from code snippets to
GUI interfaces to help visualize the data
Users are cross-disciplinary researchers with intermediate to expert
knowledge of data sets
Services are free and open to the public
Story telling by NSIDC scientists began to help further explain the science
behind the data to global communities
Users range from novice to expert researchers
Information is free and open to the public
Citizen science (social) usually collected and analyzed by
the general public in collaboration with professional
scientists
Users range from policy makers to teachers and Arctic
community members, general public
Information is free and and usually open to the public.
There can be exceptions.
Social science that links transdisciplinary data to study
the long-term human Ecodynamics of the North
Atlantic
Users are archaeologists, anthropologists, teachers,
students
Data are open
Challenges
Supporting Community Evolution
Evolution from data to tools to
social science raise privacy,
confidentiality and intellectual
property questions that need to be
addressed if we want to improve
our data stewardship practices.
The National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) is a data driven
organization, archiving and distributing snow and ice data that supports
research into the world’s frozen realms. From our historical catalog of
satellite and in-situ data to a catalog that now includes social science
data, we are evolving our support of unrestricted access to satellite
records to data that can be highly sensitive and deal with privileged
matters. This presentation will explore the challenges NSIDC has faced
in dealing with the evolving landscape of cryospheric data and services,
including the needs for diverse skillsets in our data professionals to
accommodate the growing data catalog. We will touch on the need for a
community understood definition of a data professional to enable future
data management support in building effective data teams.
Abstract
Data Professional vs. Data Scientist
Recently NSIDC formalized a Data Science Lead position. It was
challenged as being an inappropriate definition for NSIDC. The narrow
view point that a data scientist is one that works strictly to mine
information through statistics and analytics, combined with a community
definition that is not well understood led to a review and change to this
NSIDC position title.
Given the viewpoint of many at NSIDC, we wondered if having a Data
Science position narrowed the scope of our mission. Are we now moving
toward a shared understanding for data professional that can help us better
define what we do as data managers and stewards?
Data Professionals at NSIDC
Seamless Data Management
Restricted Data
Intellectual Property
Open Data
Evolving Landscape of Data and Services
top related