Monthly Archives: April 2017

International Training workshop on Big Data for Science and Sustainability

Opening ceremony of training workshop

Opening ceremony of training workshop

The CODATA PASTD – IGU joint action of the International Training workshop on Big Data for Science and Sustainability in Developing Countries was successfully held from 17th -19th March, 2017 in Hyderabad, India. Training workshop is academic event of The Xth IGU International Conference on “Urbanization, Health & Well Being and Sustainable Development Goals”. Supported by the International Geographical Union (IGU) and Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences (IGSNRR, CAS), the Hyderabad training workshop is one of CODATA PASTD’s three capacity building activities in 2017. Other training activities will be held in Madagascar in September and in China in November.

The training course introduces young scientists to the ideas of open data, data sharing and data publication.  The training also covers Big Data, data analysis and applications in order to develop skills as ‘data scientists’.  The three day training workshop included lectures and hands-on practice, which aims to develop the skills and capacity necessary for preservation of and open access to research data in developing countries.

Prof. R..B.Singh, Vice Chairman of the International Federation (IGU), delivered an opening speech

Prof. R..B.Singh, Vice Chairman of the International Federation (IGU), delivered an opening speech

Prof. R.B.Singh, Vice President of the International Geographical Union (IGU) and Co-Chair of Strategy and Policy Sub-group of CODATA PASTD, and Yukio Himiyama, President of the International Geographical Union, attended the opening and closing ceremonies respectively. 56 students from 13 universities in India attended the training courses. CODATA PASTD member, Dr. Yunqiang Zhu, Co-chair of Capacity Building Sub-group of CODATA PASTD and professor from IGSNRR, CAS, and Dr. B. Srinagesh from Osmania University organized the training as co-chairs. Chinese scientists worked along with Indian colleagues to give courses on open Big

Yukio Himiyama, President of the International Federation (IGU), awarded a certificate to the trainees

Yukio Himiyama, President of the International Federation (IGU), awarded a certificate to the trainees

Data discovery, data publication and sharing, the Indian Earth observation system, geospatial data interoperability, geospatial data infrastructure and data sharing principles.

Participation in the training workshop was active and enthusiastic and students reported the results were beneficial and favourable. Professor R. R. Shingh, and Dr. V. Raghavaswamy, Deputy Director of the National Remote Sensing Centre, India, expressed their hope that the PASTD training course will continue in future and cultivate new generation of young data scientists with growing awareness of developments in data science and the benefits of international cooperation.

The closing ceremony of the training workshop

The closing ceremony of the training workshop

Humans of Data 13

IMG_4383“Science is about discovering that things aren’t as you expected.  The more I learn, the more I realise I don’t know.  One of the fun things about what I do just now is that I get to see a lot of different research communities and how they conceive of and represent data, and what data mean to them.

There are really a lot of different discipline-oriented communities. I come from a domain repository – we just called it a data center – and for me, it’s interesting coming from that environment as opposed to the library, institution, repository, or iSchool environments, who are dealing with very similar issues and approaching them with different perspectives.

I do think in some areas there is emerging consensus and that’s exciting to see. The very fact that everyone accepts PIDs on data, that’s almost universal, we might argue about which one, but the strong consensus is that there should be something.  We’re seeing greater convergence about metadata standards, too, particularly in my field.  I think we’re getting better at listening to each other from different domains – historians and ecologists discover they have the same data problems.  This makes them feel they’re not alone but also that their problems are generic and can have common solutions.  There is a community.  When I first started at a data center 25 years ago, I’d be the data person at science conferences. That’s not the way it works any more.

We are in dire times just now.  We seem to be in an age of growing authoritarianism, and some people are trying to pretend there isn’t evidential knowledge.  This makes research all the more important. Data sharing, open knowledge, open data, it’s more important than it’s ever been.