ILTER Information Management Committee

1. ILTER Information Management Committee Kristin Vanderbilt, Ph.D. Sevilleta LTER University of New Mexico Albuquerque, NM USA

3. Information Management in the ILTER • The ILTER Strategic Plan states that ILTER’s 10-year goals are to: • Improve comparability of long-term ecological and socio-economic data from sites around the world • Facilitate exchange and integration of, access to, and preservation of long-term, site-based data • Deliver non-biased information to scientists, policymakers, and the public to meet the needs of decisionmakers at multiple levels • To meet these goals, coordinated information management programs are needed throughout the ILTER • An ILTER IM Committee has been formed to guide the development of information management throughout the network.

4. ILTER IM Committee CharterApproved at 2006 ILTER Coordinating Committee Meeting • Facilitate data exchange and preservation through adoption of standards • Coordinate development of network-level information management system

5. IM Committee Charter • Committee consists of a maximum of two representatives from each ILTER region • Terms are two years • Officers: • Chair: Kristin Vanderbilt, USA • Vice-Chair: Avinash Chuntharpursat, South Africa • Secretary: Cristiana Cocciufa, Italy

6. Kathi Schleidt Cristiana Cocciufa Kristin Vanderbilt Honglin He Atzimba Lopez Sheng Shan Lu John Irish Avinash Chuntharpursat

7. Tasks for the ILTER Information Management Committee • Assess IM capabilities and resources in the ILTER • Identify areas where improvement is required • Support training • Present options for IM standards to Executive Committee for their vote • Promote development of an information system design that scales to network level

8. ILTER Information Management Capacity Survey 2006:Results Kristin Vanderbilt Sevilleta LTER Chau-Chin Lin Taiwan Forestry Research Institute

9. Survey Goals: • Data content and accessibility • Hardware availability and internet connectivity • Software availability • Human Resources • Identify Potential Training Needs

11. Countries Responding (total respondents = 31) Central/South America Africa North America East Asia-Pacific Central/Eastern Europe Western Europe

12. What are the most critical IM/IT Issues at your ILTER Site?

13. Data Sharing • Does your ILTER site have a data sharing policy? • Yes: 12 out of 26 respondents • Some policies were detailed, but others were general

14. LONG-TERM FOREST ECOSYSTEM RESEARCH LWF DATA ACCESS POLICY GUIDELINES FOR ACCEPTABLE USE OF LWF DATA • Data access is given after submission of an official request(including a copy of the research proposal and/or other information about the data use) to: Norbert Kräuchi Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research … GENERAL CITATION Data sets were provided by the Long-term Forest Ecosystem Research Programme LWF, a partnership between the Swiss Federal Institute of Forest, Snow and Landscape Research WSL and the Swiss Federal Agency of Environment, Forest and Landscape SAEFL. DATA USER RESPONSIBILITIES: By using LWF data and documentation, the Data User agrees to abide by the terms of this agreement. LWF shall have the right to terminate this agreement immediately by written notice upon the Data User's breach of, or non-compliance with, any of its terms...

15. Data Sharing: • Example of a typical data access policy: • “All long-term data are gathered by the Academy. The Excel data are shared by all researchers. Recently the data have been launched in an Oracle database, which is supposed to be shared in the near future.”

16. Does your site store data? • 100% Yes • Estimated amount of data per site: • 6 Mb to 3 Terabytes

17. What kinds of data does your site store?

18. How are data accessed at your site (check all that apply)?

19. If data at your site aren’t publicly accessible, explain why not. • Human resource limitations • The policy is to only share metadata • No metadata • Lack of disk space • Language issues • Data owned by government bodies • Data still in the hands of the individual researchers • Lack of software • Information Management system is presently being implemented; data will be online soon

20. Internet Connectivity/Hardware • Does your ILTER site have a connection to the internet? • 23/25 (92%) Yes • 7/22 are connected via universities • 15/22 are connected via National telecommunications entities or private Internet Service Providers • Internet connection speed • < 256 kbps (11/21 respondents) • > 1 Mbps (8/11 respondents)

21. Human Resources: • Does your ILTER site have personnel with specialized skills in data management? • 13/23 (57%) Yes • Is there computer system administration support available at your ILTER site? • 18/24 Yes (75%)

22. What are the most pressing software needs at your ILTER site?

23. Which training programs would be most beneficial in meeting your site needs?

24. Summary: • Most ILTER sites lack a formal data sharing and access policy. • ILTER sites have rich archives of data, but few sites have made their data publicly accessible. • 57% of sites have personnel trained in information management, yet lack of training in information management and IT is cited as the greatest barrier to IM at ILTER sites. • Availability of computers appears to be adequate, but bandwidth is relatively low in 50% of cases. • Many kinds of software are available at sites, but more database management system software and tools for generating metadata are needed.

25. IM Committee Activities • IM Workshop at LTER All Scientists’ Meeting in Estes Park, Colorado, USA September 23, 2006

26. International Information exchange, sharing, and cooperation activities:Information Management Alternatives • Introduction to Working Group – Hen-biau King/Kristin Vanderbilt • Ontology-based IMS – Katharina Schleidt (Austria) • EML-based IMS – Corinna Gries (CAP LTER) • TERN IMS – Meei-ru Jeng (Taiwan) • Site Characteristics Search Engine – Atzimba Lopez (Mexico) • SAEON Collaborative GIS IMS – Avinash Chuntharpursat (South Africa) • Discussion • http://sev.lternet.edu/ilter_im/

27. Two conference calls • International LTER Data Access and Use Policy • ILTER Information Manager Mentoring Web Page • Interactions with GBIF (Global Biodiversity Information Facility)

28. IM Workshop at Annual ILTER Meeting in Beijing, August 2007:“From EML to Ontologies” • Some members of ILTER have an ontology-based Information Management System, while others use EML

29. IM Workshop Agenda • Intro to EML and what we can do with it (Chin and Kristin) • Intro to Ontologies and how they can be used (Kathi Schleidt and Michael Mirtl, Austria)

30. ILTER Coordinating Committee Meeting (Beijing) • IM Committee will propose that ILTER support formation of an ILTER Interest Group at TDWG (Taxonomic Data Working Group) • EML task group -- to study how to make EML more ontology-like • IM Committee will propose an ILTER Network Data Access and Use Policy

31. What next? • IM advances should occur in two phases • Phase I: Resolve issues identified in survey and strengthen site-level information management systems (years 1-5) • Training • Establish web accessible data archives at all sites • Metadata standards • Create cross-site databases (promotes network identity!) • ILTER data catalog • ILTER ClimDB • Phase II: Based on ILTER regional and global science questions, guide development of ILTER Information Management Systems to facilitate collaboration and network research (years 6 – ?)