Monthly Archives: June 2020

A CODATA Connect Webinar on “Trust Building for Effective Data Sharing as the Global Community Recovers from COVID-19” by Theresa Dirndorfer Anderson

On 25th May 2020, a webinar titled “Trust Building for Effective Data Sharing as the Global Community Recovers from COVID-19” was organized by the CODATA Connect Alumni and Early Career Network. This was the fourth webinar in the series on Smart and Resilient Cities, while other webinars are planned in the coming months throughout 2020. Dr. Shaily Gandhi of CODATA Connect introduced the speaker and theme of the webinar series. As introduced, the speaker Ms. Theresa Dirndorfer Anderson is a data and information ethicist passionate about shaping future digital and data infrastructures. Based in Sydney, Australia, she is an active contributor to local and international initiatives to humanize data science. Theresa’s award-winning work as an educator and as a researcher for the past twenty years engages with the ever-evolving relationship between people and emerging technologies through transdisciplinary and value-sensitive lenses. Her scholarly work involves the fundamental concepts of uncertainty, relevance and resilience. Before her academic career, Theresa worked as an analyst in research centres and think tanks. She has also worked as a diplomat and environmental education officer.

Theresa began her talk introducing the matter of trust in everyday life. Based on the literature, she opined, “Trust implies a projection; it involves a judgment that mobilizes both rational and emotional components, direct and indirect experiences.” She further stated that “Trust today is granted on two distinct attributes: competence, delivering on promises, and ethical behaviour, doing the right thing and working to improve society.” In this context, she explained ‘Building Trust’ in four quadrants, namely, ‘Reassurance’ encompassing communication and professionalism, ‘Resilience’ involving persistence and creativity, ‘Relationships’ embracing building and maintaining connections, and ‘Reflection’ involving time to think and test. She opined that trust-building is a matter of personal, local, and political choices. Through an audience poll, she demonstrated that the key to creating a trustworthy organization involves the government and legal frameworks, leadership from within the organization, governance frameworks within the organization, societal pressure, and citizen activism in equal measure.  Then she presented evidence from the Edelman Trust Barometer 2020 survey that shows trust restores balance and enables partnership. Among those who trust, institutions are more closely aligned. She opined that there is a need to demonstrate trustworthiness for tiding over the uncertainties and vulnerabilities in extreme situations such as the post-COVID19 world order. Building trust is needed from inside that involves working within the community and for the community, while accepting risk, responsibility, and accountability help in mitigating risks. She then presented her model of locating, trust-building, and ethical data practice in a sociotechnical framework, where she emphasized the gradual progression toward establishing legitimacy, working towards acceptance, establishing credibility, gaining and maintaining trust, and codesign. She elaborates on the ways forward in building public-trust with wellbeing as our driver, encompassing 4Rs, namely, Reassurance, Resilience,  Relationships, and Reflection. She brought in the insight from indigenous data sovereignty and indigenous data governance that the Global Indigenous Data Alliance (GIDA) promotes with the #BeFAIRandCARE campaign. Here FAIR Data supplements CARE data principles that stand for the collective benefit, authority to control, responsibility, and ethics. In her closing remark, she emphasized that public-trust is not lightly given; it is earned over time and is an ongoing process of engagement with the community.

Mr. Felix Emeka Anyiam of the CODATA Connect moderated the Question and Answer session and was assigned to obtain questions from the online participants keyed into the webinar question handle.  Some of the questions were related to the live surveys Theresa was doing using Menti.com. A participant commented on the Trust Barometer 2020 survey concerning some governments’ competency in building trust. 

The session was concluded with a vote of thanks presented by Shaily. She also announced the forthcoming activities of the CODATA Connect, including an Essay Writing Competition on “Open Data Challenges to Address Global and Societal Issues”, launching our second webinar series “Research Skill Development”,  and Smart and Sustainable Cities Datathon for the CODATA alumni and early career professionals.

Prepared by:

Anup Kumar Das
(Jawaharlal Nehru University, India, anup_csp@jnu.ac.in)

May 2020: Publications in the Data Science Journal


Title:
Alter-Value in Data Reuse: Non-Designated Communities and Creative Processes
Author
: Guillaume Boutard
URL: 
http://doi.org/10.5334/dsj-2020-023

Title:
Virtual European Solar & Planetary Access (VESPA): A Planetary Science Virtual Observatory Cornerstone
Author:S. Erard, B. Cecconi, P. Le Sidaner, C. Chauvin, A. P. Rossi, M. Minin, T. Capria, S. Ivanovski, B. Schmitt, V. Génot, N. André, C. Marmo, A. C. Vandaele, L. Trompet, M. Scherf, R. Hueso, A. Määttänen, B. Carry, N. Achilleos, J. Soucek, D. Pisa, K. Benson, P. Fernique, E. Millour
URL: http://doi.org/10.5334/dsj-2020-022
Title: EVER-EST: The Platform Allowing Scientists to Cross-Fertilize and Cross-Validate Data
Author
: Mirko Albani, Rosemarie Leone, Federica Foglini, Francesco De Leo, Fulvio Marelli, Iolanda Maggio
URL: http://doi.org/10.5334/dsj-2020-021
Title: ESA EO Data Preservation System
Author
: Mirko Albani, Michel Douzal, Domenico Castrovillari, Paolo Boezi, Daniele Iozzino, Iolanda Maggio
URL: http://doi.org/10.5334/dsj-2020-020
Title: Use of Available Data To Inform The COVID-19 Outbreak in South Africa: A Case Study
Author
: Vukosi Marivate, Herkulaas MvE Combrink
URL: http://doi.org/10.5334/dsj-2020-019
Title: Persistent Identification of Instruments
Author: Markus Stocker , Louise Darroch, Rolf Krahl, Ted Habermann, Anusuriya Devaraju, Ulrich Schwardmann, Claudio D’Onofrio, Ingemar Häggström
URL: http://doi.org/10.5334/dsj-2020-018

Disaster Risk Reduction and Open Data Newsletter: June 2020 Edition

World Bank: To strengthen climate resilience, countries must strengthen economic resilience
Country-specific reforms need to be at the core of building macro-financial resilience and capacity to deal with climate-related risks. But because there seems to be a positive correlation between macro-financial and climate-related risks, support from the international community is also important. In this update, the World Bank has provided analysis to aid government policies.

WMO: Global partnership urges stronger preparation for hot weather during COVID-19
As the Northern Hemisphere enters what is expected to be another record-breaking heat season, a global network of health and climate experts supported by WMO has called for stronger preparation to keep people safe in hot weather without increasing the risk of the spread of COVID-19.

Advances highlighted in climate risk and early warning systems
As the world continues to manage COVID-19 and looks at ensuring that the recovery addresses climate change threats, the significance of advanced multi-hazard threat warnings and risk information has never been more widely acknowledged.

This is highlighted in the 2019 Annual Report of the Climate Risk & Early Warning Systems (CREWS) initiative, released jointly by the WMO, the GFDRR, and the UNDRR.

UNDRR: COVID-19 puts human rights of millions at risk
Loretta Hieber Girardet, chief of the UNDRR Asia and the Pacific Regional Office said the office would focus on the impact of emergency measures on freedom of expression, rising xenophobia, human rights of migrants and persons deprived of their liberty.

WMO: updates guidelines on multi-hazard impact-based forecast and warning systems
The World Meteorological Organization is updating its 2015 Guidelines on Multi-Hazard Impact-Based Forecast and Warning Services (IBFWS), which promote best practice in the development of effective hydrometeorological warning systems to improve public safety.

Are we there yet? The transition from response to recovery
As the world transitions to recovering from COVID-19, those developing that recovery need support in adjusting and improving their policies and measures. This paper provides a set of policy directions to be considered during the transition towards, as well as throughout, this transition phase. For a link to the full webinar, head here.

UNDRR Asia-Pacific brief: Business resilience in the face of COVID-19
The COVID-19 pandemic is having a devastating impact on businesses across Asia-Pacific. This brief highlights the challenges businesses face in building their resilience and offers recommendations to business owners and policymakers.

UNU-INWEH: Water and migration: A global overview
This report aims to support the United Nations (UN) and its partners in developing climate-sensitive conflict prevention approaches.

SDSN TReNDS Releases New Report, “Leaving No One Off The Map: A Guide For Gridded Population Data For Sustainable Development”
Drawing from an extensive literature review and interviews with key data providers and users in the POPGRID Data Collaborative, this new report presents an overview, analysis, and recommendations for the use of gridded population datasets in a wide range of application areas, such as in disaster response, health interventions, and survey planning.

Strengthening preparedness for COVID-19 in cities and urban settings
This document is to support local authorities, leaders and policy-makers in cities and other urban settlements in identifying effective approaches and implementing recommended actions that enhance the prevention, preparedness and readiness for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in urban settings, to ensure a robust response and eventual recovery.

UNESCO: How to respond to tsunamis in times of social distancing? Follow the regional guidelines
These guidelines aid to clarify possible confusion generated by COVID-19 sanitary priorities and regulations in regard to response actions during a tsunami warning such as evacuation and sheltering.

Reviewing the Oceanic Niño Index (ONI) to Enhance Societal Readiness for El Niño’s Impacts
In this article, it is proposed that the ONI value of 0.7 °C identifies a tipping point at which the El Niño event becomes locked in, which can provide an additional lead time for mitigative actions to be taken by societal decision-makers.

June 9: Could El Niño Long Range Warning System help countries manage the effects of severe weather events?
Currently, many countries are experiencing severe drought. Could the impacts of drought have been minimised with an effective long-range warning system (LRWS)?Join us for a free webinar as we discuss this important matter.

GEO Virtual Symposium 2020 (15-19 June)
The GEO Virtual Symposium 2020 is less than one month away! The schedule of events taking place from June 15-19 has just been released – entirely online.

CODATA: Smart and Sustainable Cities Datathon (Registration ends June 30)
The Smart Datathon will create the environment for early career researchers and data science enthusiasts to create insights and models from extracting and analysing open data sources from various open platforms in order to develop novel solutions that will lead to real-world solutions, benefiting the cities and the society at large.

Webinar: Glacier Loss and the Climate Change Crisis: Evidence from Patagonia and the Last Glacial Maximum (June 16) ​
The Centre for Crisis Studies and Mitigation at The University of Manchester invites you for a virtual session. The talk will be followed by moderated Q&A via Zoom Chat.

Webinar: Disaster Resilient Infrastructure: A Tale of Two Floods (June 23)
The Centre for Crisis Studies and Mitigation at The University of Manchester invites you to a virtual session on how globally rainfall patterns are changing due to climate change, and the major challenges to the resilience infrastructure.

UNESCO Global Consultations on Open Science: deadline 15 June.
Are you a scientist, a publisher, a science policymaker or someone with experience and interest in Open Science? Your input is important to the UNESCO process. Please participate in the survey designed to collect inputs for the development of the UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science.