1. Introduction
The United States Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) was
established to observe, understand, and predict global change, and to
make its results available for use in policy matters. To meet this goal,
the USGCRP researchers must investigate issues that extend across
traditional disciplines. The data and information needed include both
discipline-specific and assimilated data sets that are combinations of
data and information from disciplines that range from the
geophysical and biological sciences to economics and social sciences.
These data and information will result from physical observations,
sociological surveys, or model results, and will transcend agency and
national boundaries. Thus, the data and information management
component of the USGCRP is challenged to build upon existing data
center structures to create a more comprehensive and versatile
resource.
In 1992, the Committee on Earth and Environmental Sciences (CEES)
published the U.S. Global Change Data and Information
Management Program Plan to address these challenges. In that
plan, agencies participating in the USGCRP committed program
resources (consistent with their roles and missions) to the goal of an
interagency global change data and information management
program, consistent across agencies, that involves and supports
university, international, and other user communities. This present
document uses that plan to define the implementation of a Global
Change Data and Information System (GCDIS). It defines the
interagency mechanisms that will be established to coordinate the
efforts of individual agencies involved in implementing the GCDIS,
overall timetables, and agency-by-agency overviews with schedules
of the implementation efforts. This GCDIS implementation plan will
evolve through regular updates to reflect changing USGCRP research
priorities, agency plans, technology advancements, program
accomplishments, and the changing needs of global change data and
information users.
The goal of the U.S. Global Change Data and Information Management
Program is to make it as easy as possible for researchers and others
to have ready access to and use of global change data and
information. To achieve this goal, the USGCRP agencies are organizing
the GCDIS, which builds upon the mission resources and
responsibilities of each agency and links the data and information
services of the agencies to each other and to the users.
The use of the word system in GCDIS embraces the full
range of people, infrastructure (e.g., hardware, software, networks,
telephones, mail), and procedures for identifying, assembling,
documenting, archiving, and disseminating that as a whole can
provide users with data and information services.
The GCDIS is the set of individual agency data and information
systems supplemented by a minimal amount of crosscutting new
infrastructure, and made interoperable by use of standards, common
approaches, technology sharing, and data policy coordination. Thus,
portions of each agency's own data and information system will be
that agency's component of the GCDIS, and the GCDIS will emerge
through this coordinated interagency participation. Some agencies
may arrange to have other agencies assume responsibility for
selected aspects of their GCDIS-related functions. This is how
Department of Defense (DOD) data will be made available to the
GCDIS.
The scope of the GCDIS implementation effort is described in this
plan in terms of the user community it serves, its data and
information content, and the access services it provides. Each of these
will be discussed in more detail later in this plan.
User Community
The primary users of the GCDIS are the global change researchers in
agencies, academia, and the international community who conduct
process research, integrative modeling and prediction investigations,
and science assessment studies; researchers, policymakers, and
educators who assess the state of global change and global change
research to provide information for policy decisions; and the
public.
The level of services, data, and information each class of user
requires will vary significantly. For example, process researchers will
more likely need large samples of raw data that may include
combinations of data streams from several experiments or
observational systems. Assessment studies will include the synthesis
of the output of models that, for example, may characterize the world
economy, atmospheric chemistry, ocean circulation, ecological
systems, and social preferences and dynamics. Policymakers more
likely will seek summarized and evaluated information, much of
which will be in the form of text, graphs, and tables.
The GCDIS user community also extends to those agencies, programs,
projects, individuals, and others that are sources of the data and
information in the GCDIS and for which the GCDIS will provide
archiving and distribution. The GCDIS services required by each of
the different types of users will differ, but have many aspects in
common.
Data and Information Content
The scope and priorities for GCDIS data and information content are
driven by the data and information required to carry out current and
planned USGCRP activities. The scope of data and information for the
GCDIS comprises the Earth science data holdings (including in situ
and satellite) of the agencies, selected analyzed and assimilated data
sets, selected output from global change models, published
documents, and socioeconomic data and information (including the
areas of population, economic systems, and political systems and
institutions) necessary for the study of human dimensions of global
change. A large fraction of these data and information will come from
contributing sources rather than from the focused global change
research program.
The USGCRP encompasses the geophysical, geochemical, biological,
social, and economic sciences and the research involved with
integrated assessments of environmental policy issues. Of these areas
of activity, however, only a subset of the geosciences has a tradition
of institutional support for data and information services provided
through data centers. The other disciplines, having no such traditions,
presently lack the funding or other incentives to build this structural
capability. This difference is reflected by the near-term
implementation emphasis in this plan on geophysical data and
geophysical data centers.
For the longer term, agencies face a significant task simply to
identify the vast array of data and information they currently hold
that would contribute toward a better understanding of the
environment. Following this identification, based on the highest
priority areas of interest, the task is to design and subsequently
implement data and information services adequate to support the
full breadth of the USGCRP. To start this process, the agencies plan to
implement several pilot projects that are intended to broaden the
scope of the GCDIS beyond its present emphasis on geophysical data
and information.
Data and Information Access Services
The scope of the data and information access services to be provided
by the cooperative action of agency elements of the GCDIS includes
user service procedures; generic and specialized user interfaces; a
hierarchical structure with multiple points of access for identifying
relevant data and information sets including directory, guide, and
inventory information, library and information center resources, and
browse products; data dictionary; search and order functions; data
formats for users; and standards for distribution media and user
documentation.
International Context
The GCDIS is designed to permit extension to international data and
information holders, providers, and users. An important means to
access international data and information will be provided initially
through existing agency participation in the World Data Center
system. This system, conceived and fostered by the International
Council of Scientific Unions (ICSU), is responsible for archiving and
exchanging important environmental data and information among
almost all nations. A number of agency data centers associated with
the implementation of the GCDIS currently has responsibility under
this system for a broad range of important global change data and
information. All GCDIS archive sites will be linked to agency data
centers with World Data Center status.
The data and information management program will be implemented
in the context of the following set of high-level principles.
Implementation Drivers
- There will be consistency with USGCRP research and policy
priorities.
- The implementation will be driven by research, policy, and
other user requirements.
- User satisfaction and extent of use will be employed to assess
the success of the system and to guide its evolution.
- Individual agency-managed implementation efforts within a
framework for cooperation will be provided by the implementation
plan.
- There will be an open and extensible system architecture that
plans for evolution and provides pointers to all priority data and
information that are available with user support.
- Multilevel, multipath access that recognizes the needs of
individual user communities will be available to users.
- Easy access to data and information resources, such as those
maintained by States, other countries, and national and international
organizations, will be facilitated by the adoption of locator technology
freely available on the international Internet.
Funding Assumptions
- Resource requirements for the focused program activities of
the individual agencies for data and information management have
been included in USGCRP planning.
- A USGCRP program will be implemented to provide access
through the GCDIS to large quantities of priority data and
information obtained by programs outside the global change
program.
- The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
will seek funding to provide the information services to enable users
to locate data and information across the full set of agency systems.
- The network interconnection of the agency systems and their
connection to the user community will be provided by the High
Performance Computing and Communications Program (HPCC) and
the National Research and Education Network (NREN).
- The pace and level of the GCDIS implementation will be limited
by the availability of resources in each of the participating
agencies.
Implementation Approach
- The GCDIS implementation will ensure that the data and
information priorities for the necessary aspects of the USGCRP are
established.
- The GCDIS will be built upon many other agency programs that
are vital to the USGCRP as a source of data and information, as well
as of systems infrastructure without degrading the services those
programs are now providing.
- GCDIS implementation will use and build upon the agency
infrastructure and technology developed to meet agency-specific
requirements.
- Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS) and national
and international standards will be used wherever possible to
promote interoperability, extensibility, and capability for evolution.
- Agencies will implement procedures to ensure that the priority
data and information resulting from their funding of individual
global change researchers are made available to the GCDIS in forms
useful to the user community.
- Libraries and information centers, with their data and
information resources, services, and standards, will be an integral
part of the GCDIS.
- Global change data and information will be accessed
electronically through the Internet and its successor network, and
will be distributed by a variety of methods.
In order to help evaluate how well the GCDIS is meeting the data and
information management needs of the USGCRP community, a set of
criteria for measuring the success of the GCDIS has been established.
Such means of evaluation are critical both for identifying and
resolving problem areas and for helping guide the evolution of the
GCDIS. The criteria themselves will evolve based on experience with
their use and changes of the constraints and environment within
which the GCDIS must function. The criteria are as follows:
- Satisfaction of users by To help assess user's perception
each user category perception of the GCDIS
- Rate of increase in the To assess the rate of growth of the
number of repeat users in number of users who find the GCDIS
each category important enough for their work that
they continue to use it
- Fractional use of the GCDIS To help assess GCDIS coverage and
compared with other data the importance of the GCDIS to its user
and information sources by community
each user category
- Fraction of data and To help assess the contribution the
information that is relatable GCDIS makes to the easy
and interoperable interdisciplinary use of its data
and information
- Satisfaction of the other To assess how well the GCDIS meets the
program elements of the programmatic needs of the
USGCRP
The user categories for these evaluations will evolve, but initially
they will be research (physical, biological, human dimensions),
assessment and policy, operations, education, and
international.
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Go to Chapter 2. Implementation
Coordination