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IEDRO News 1 IEDRO Named by NOAA to Support U.S. GCOS Program The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) released a request for proposal (RFP) to support the U.S. Global Climate Observing System (GCOS), with support activities scheduled to begin in August 2012. The RFP states that the winning contractor will “facilitate various international data rescue projects of climate and weather information in coordination and consultation with the International Environmental Data Rescue Organization (IEDRO)”. The task order contract, of undisclosed valued, consists of a one-year period and an option of four additional years. It provides scientific and technical support services to the U.S. GCOS Program Office in fulfillment of its international climate services mission. Through this contract, NOAA plans to implement and manage various international climate data rescue and digitization projects in Africa, Central America, South America and the South Pacific regions. IEDRO will deploy its scientific and technical teams to provide a host of our climate services and products in support of NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) while adhering to scientific data stewardship principles. NOAA’s mission is to understand and predict changes in the Earth's environment, from the depths of the ocean to the surface of the sun, and to conserve and manage our coastal and marine resources. GCOS, established in 1992, plans the collection of climate observational data responding to the need for a comprehensive, long-term, global climate monitoring system. These observations are critical to climate change detection, monitoring the impacts of and response to climate change, generating climate data for application to international economic development and research toward improved understanding, modeling and prediction of the planet’s climate system. The program is co-sponsored by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) of UNESCO, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the International Council for Science (ICSU). 2 WMO's Global Framework for Climate Services (GFCS) Implementation Plan Update The final Global Framework for Climate Services (GFCS) Implementation Plan and Governance documents will be available after September 17, 2012. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) accepted comments on the First Order Draft and Second Order Draft which closed on July 15 and August 17, respectively. The GFCS, or Framework, was established at the WMO’s World Climate Conference-3 (WCC-3) in 2009 to strengthen essential climate services, including the Global Climate Observing System (GCOS), and to ensure free and unrestricted exchange and access to global climate data. It comprises a coordinated effort by organizations already involved in providing and using climate information and services. The goal of uniting data collection with data users is to improve the quality and volume of climate services worldwide, especially for economically developing countries. Through the Framework, organizations that collect and exchange climate data, undertake research and generate climate information will help develop protocols and standards for data exchange between themselves and other organizations. and the Framework will also help build closer relationships between researchers, climate information providers and users – improving accessibility to climate data for all. The purpose of the Implementation Plan is to provide specific insight into the benefits that the GFCS can provide in the near future in the four priority areas and how to concretely achieve these by discerning necessary building blocks. IEDRO, as an organization heavily involved in climate data rescue services, has a vested interest in making significant contributions to the international effort contributing to the implementation plan. 3 Geoscience Data Journal – Open Call for Papers with Datasets The Royal Meteorological Society and John Wiley & Sons, Inc., announced the Geoscience Data Journal in July. The new online-only journal publishes short, earth science data papers that are cross-linked to datasets deposited in approved data centers. The Journal offers an open-access platform for publishing scientific data in a manner that includes scientific peer-review. A data article describes a dataset, giving details of its collection, processing, software, file formats etc, without the requirement of novel analyses or ground breaking conclusions. It allows the reader to understand the when, how and why data was collected and what the data-product is. 4 IEDRO Finds Common Goals with IRI and USAID IEDRO met with Dr. Stephen Zebiak, International Research Institute (IRI) for Climate and Society at Columbia University, and John Furlow, U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). IEDRO currently utilizes IRI’s INGRID portal tools in our Data Analysis and Visualization products and services. Collaborative efforts between climate services providers, governmental agencies, NGOs, universities and nonprofit organizations will only strengthen IEDRO’s reach and impact directly benefiting developing countries. 5 Vaccine Monitoring Initiative and IEDRO Dr. Wilbert van Panhuis met with IEDRO in June to discuss the vulnerability of international public health data, at risk of degradation in paper format, and the need for preservation and digitization along with open access. Van Panhuis is the lead investigator at the University of Pittsburgh’s Project Tycho, an online database containing the entire digitized history of the U.S. weekly National Notifiable Diseases Surveillance System (NNDSS) since 1888. This project is part of the Vaccine Modeling Initiative (VMI) funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The University of Pittsburgh’s Public Health Dynamics lab uses public health data for computational modeling. IEDRO’s own data rescue and digitization efforts support research into disease vectorization. The overlaps between our data rescue efforts have worldwide benefit and applications to mankind. 6 CSP and ICCS 2 From September 5-7, IEDRO will be attending the International Conference on Climate Change II (ICCS 2) at the Royal Academies for Science and the Arts of Belgium (RASAB) in Brussels. The Climate Service Partnership will provide an update on its activities while the goal of the conference is to facilitate the development of a Climate Service Enterprise (CSE), an international collaboration in Climate Services providers and users. 7 UNESCO Digitization and Preservation Conference - September 26-28, 2012 Meet IEDRO at UNESCO’s “The Memory of the World in the Digital Age: Digitization and Preservation” conference in Vancouver. This conference will provide stakeholders an opportunity to assess current digitization practices and policies and to propose recommendations to ensure permanent access to our digital documentary heritage. We look forward to connecting with fellow digital information preservationists and meeting additional members of the International Council for Science (ICSU) Committee on Data for Science and Technology (CODATA) Data at Risk Task Group (DARTG).