American Geophysical Union – Multi-Domain Collaborative Analysis

Earlier this week I was an invited speaker at the American Geophysical Union’s session on Virtual Globes. The AGU is currently the largest scientific conference in the world – and takes over both Moscone West and South in San Francisco (not a small feat).

There is indoubtably an increased need for greater public engagement with earth science. Climate change, weather patterns, natural disasters, health and local environment all impact citizens, business, and governments. Traditionally this information, and especially access to the analytical tools, have been relegated to domain experts using very complicated and opaque methods and tools. The complexity of geophysics is definitely daunting, but this shouldn’t account for any shortcomings in making the results shareable, accessible, and explorable.

My talk, Open Access to Multi-Domain Collaborative Geospatial Analysis walked through a framework for thinking about how to broadly open geophysical research and examples of how it’s successfully being done.

In particular, key points are that the data and results should be broadly accessibly beyond strictly “Virtual Globes”. The internet has now provided us a way to globally push and query data. This can be via maps, globes, mobile devices, and any other tools. The importance is to consider who the user is and how they can find meaningful insight into the research. For citizens to understand “WIMBY?” – What’s in My Backyard? – they need to be able to bring contextual understanding through comparing in very local areas, against personal data (water quality near playgrounds, Earthquakes in cities I may want to move to)

We also need to provide ways for the public and other researchers to feed back into these models and analyses. Commenting on changes in ground measurements (the forest near this site has been cut down, and here’s a photo), providing comparative analysis from other domains, and looking at the changes in predictions versus outcomes from historic analysis.

Physical science and the planet have an intimate impact on our lives – it’s important for us to open the conversation in order to make better futures.