Democratizing Data - Challenges and Opportunities

The landscape of Earth-based environmental monitoring has been rapidly evolving in recent decades. Technological advances in several areas have spurred the generation of high-resolution, high-quantity data sets, which have subsequently enabled the creation of more advanced decision support products and expanded educational and research opportunities. Additionally, both the sources of this data and its consumers are changing. Once the primary domain of the federal government, today municipalities, academic institutions and commercial companies are rapidly scaling up monitoring capabilities on the ground, in the water, and above the planet to meet growing constituency needs. While this transformative paradigm creates new opportunities for advanced systems, capabilities, and insights there are also new challenges relative to monetization and availability of the data.

As environmental data becomes more of a commodity with multitudes of varying owners, operators, competitors, and users of observational network platforms, considerations of both data ownership and data availability including data democratization must be considered. Concepts such as Open Data, FAIR, and CARE principles have been established to promote broader findability, accessibility, interoperability, responsibility, and equity. At the same time, data restrictions, licensing, and attribution are often necessary to protect and promote significant monetary investments.

This presentation will discuss the numerous factors that must be contemplated in this new information ecosystem as the weather, water, and climate enterprise moves forward.