New Deliverables of the second Arctic Science Ministerial meeting

Title
The Sustaining Arctic Observing Networks (SAON)

Funding Programme and/or Organisation
The Arctic Council through the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme (AMAP)
International Arctic Science Committee (IASC)

Coordinating organisations and main contact person
Sustaining Arctic Observing Networks (SAON)
SAON Secretary: Jan Rene Larsen,

Description of the deliverable

A roadmap to a well-integrated Arctic Observing System

TheIDAScience and Technology Policy Institute (STPI)andSAONpublished theInternational Arctic Observations Assessment Framework[1], defining 12 Social Benefit Areas (SBAs) that rely on Arctic observations. The Framework will provide the foundation and justification for future international efforts to assess the value of Arctic observations and to structure a pan-Arctic observing system.

One of the 12 SBAs is Weather and Climate, and this is the theme for a project under the Finland Chairmanship of the Arctic Council 2017-19[2]. It will identify existing services and observation data sources needed to support this SBA through a so-called value tree analysis. National experts involved in the project have been nominated through SAON. Input to the project includes EU-PolarNet’sInventories of observational/monitoring and modelling programmes, which is based on input from, among other, SAON.

In addition to the mentioned EU-PolarNet inventory, SAON develops and maintains these inventories:

  • SAON data access point, harvesting and testing data from a series of contributing repositories
  • SAON Project directory
  • The Atlas of Community-Based Monitoring & Indigenous Knowledge in a Changing Arctic[3]was initiated as a task of SAON.

Free and ethically open access to all Arctic observational data

Data and system interoperability has been identified as one of the primary goals and challenges of interest to the broader polar and global community, and this was the topic of the ADC co-organised Polar Connections Interoperability Workshop in 2016.

ADC was a member of the group that responded to the Open Geospatial Consortium’s Request for Information on Arctic Spatial Data in 2016.

In 2017 ADC and partners produced the document Polar Data and Platform Interoperability Resource Requirements. It outlines financial, technical, and human resources needed to move towards a new model for polar data management.

ADC contributed to EU-PolarNet’s report Data management recommendations for polar research data systems and infrastructures in Europe in 2017.

In May 2018, ADC will co-organise the Polar Data Planning Summit. The focus of the Summit 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 or scenario.

Ongoing projects of the Arctic Data Committee include:

  • Establishing a map of the arctic data management “ecosystem”. This will be both a concept map indicating projects, services and relationships as well as a geographic map indicating location.
  • The Vocabularies and Semantics Working Group is a joint expert group of ADC, the Interagency Arctic Research Policy Committee(IARPC) and the Standing Committee on Antarctic Data Management (SCADM). It coordinates vocabularies and semantics development activities across the polar information community

Arctic Observing Summit (AOS)

AOS is a high-level, biennial summit that aims to provide community-driven, science-based guidance for the design, implementation, coordination and sustained long-term (decades) operation of an international network of Arctic observing systems.

The theme of the 2018 AOS is ‘The Business Case for a pan-Arctic Observing System’. It is organised in cooperation between the International Study of Arctic Change (ISAC) and SAON. AOS is SAON’s outreach event.

Website

International scientific cooperation dimension

Members of the SAON Board are the Arctic Council countries (Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Russia and USA) and (China,) France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea, Poland, Spain, United Kingdom. A number of international organisations are also members of the SAON Board: (List).

The relation with the themes of the ASM1 and the connection with the themes of the ASM2

Theme from ASM1: Strengthening and Integrating Arctic Observations and Data-Sharing

Theme from ASM2: Strengthening, Integrating and Sustaining Arctic Observations, Facilitating Access to Arctic Data, and Sharing Arctic Research Infrastructure

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