ENHANCING POLAR RESEARCH AND DECISION MAKING: ADVANCES IN INTERNATIONAL DATA SHARING THROUGH ACTIVE COLLABORATION

A number of recent conferences, workshops and meetings have confirmed that there are many national, regional and local projects and programs that are active in polar data mana - gement and stewardship and also have a mandate or desire to contribute to regional or international coordination of effort and activities. Many of those initiatives have resources available and are making progress towards an envisioned connected, interoperable polar data system. The international polar data community is eager to improve cooperation and coordination of their efforts. In the spring of 2018, representatives from a wide range of different active programs and projects will come together to focus on work planning and coordination of effort. This meeting will complement past workshops and fora (e.g. IPY, Polar Data Forums etc.) that have been effective in defining important community challenges and technical issues. The focus of the planned meeting will be to generate detailed plans on how best to mobilise existing and soon-to-be initiated funded activities to develop a particular international data sharing case study. At the annual meetings of the Arctic Data Committee and the Standing Committee on Antarctic Data Management held in Montreal in September 2017, a focus on the sharing of meteorological observations and linking to existing terrestrial data networks was discussed as one possibility. Discussions on the precise nature of the case study will continue, a decision will be taken during the fall of 2017 and it will be reported in this paper. The meeting will be co-led and co-organized by key polar data projects and programs. As of writing, organizers include: IASC/SAON Arctic data Committee; SCAR Standing Committee on Antarctic Data Management; Southern Ocean Observing System; Global Cryosphere Watch and related WMO activities; Polar View; Arctic Spatial Data Infrastructure; EU Arctic Cluster including 8 current EU funded projects; GEO Cold Regions Initiative; Canadian Polar Data Workshop Network; Canadian Consortium on Arctic Data Interoperability; representatives from the Arctic Social Science Community; Research Data Alliance. One International Indigenous organization was part of the initial conceptualization of project in June of 2017 and more input is needed and is actively being sought from Indigenous organizations. In this presentation we report details of the planning process, the established case study, possible inte roperability mechanisms and a discussion of the collaborative process involved in bringing together data stewards from around the Arctic, Antarctica and beyond.

Abstract of an Oral Presentation or a Poster