Dr Xiaogang MA and Dr Robert Redmon were presented with the WDS Stewardship Award for 2013 and 2014 at the SciDataCon 2014 Conference held in New Delhi this week. The WDS Data Stewardship Award highlights exceptional contributions to the improvement of scientific data stewardship by early career researchers through their engagement with the community, academic achievements, and innovations. ...
DataCite and the ICSU World Data System (ICSU-WDS) announce an agreement to strengthen their collaboration and enhance the availability of high-quality scientific data to researchers worldwide. To accomplish this, the two principal membership organizations will cooperate more closely through joint working groups leading to results that will benefit their communities. They will also enhance ...
The third Webinar for WDS Members and other interested Data Repositories and Services took place on Thursday, 2 October 2014 at 13:00 UTC/GMT. The topic of this Webinar was the Publishing Data initiatives being undertaken through a joint effort of the ICSU World Data System (ICSU-WDS) and the Research Data Alliance (RDA), and attendees were updated on the current activities of the various ...
Prof Bernard Minster (Chair of the WDS Scientific Committee) and Dr Mustapha Mokrane (Executive Director of the WDS International Programme Office [WDS-IPO]) officially represented the World Data System at the 31st General Assembly of the International Council for Science (ICSU GA) held on 30 August–4 September in Auckland, New Zealand. Professor Minster presented to the ICSU GA plenary ...
A call for parallel sessions is now open for a major international conference entitled Our Common Future Under Climate Change. This Scientific conference is organized by a partnership of French (CIRED, CNRS, IDDRI, INRA, IPSL, IRD) and international (ICSU, UNESCO, Future Earth) institutions and is expected to bring together over 1,000 scientists and other stakeholders.
This conference will take place on 7–10 July 2015 in Paris—ahead of the UNFCCC 21st Conference of the Parties that is expected to adopt a new climate agreement—and will discuss IPCC findings and new research since the publication of AR5, with a strong focus on solutions. It will also consider climate adaptation and mitigation in the broader context of global environmental change. Specifically, the conference is structured around four themes:
– State of knowledge on Climate Change
– Scenarios Exploring Our Common Future
– Responding to Climate Change Challenges
– Collective Action and Transformative Solutions
The deadline to submissions is 30 November 2014. Please see the conference website for more details on the guidelines and template for submitting proposals: www.commonfuture-paris2015.org/
The peer-reviewed Journal of Map & Geography Libraries (JMGL) is inviting submissions for a special issue on the management, curation, and preservation of digital geospatial information. In particular, articles are encouraged that report on current research and development efforts in this area, and that build on previous work. Possible topics include, but are not limited to:
– Policies, strategies, frameworks, or approaches for fostering current and future use of geospatial data.
– Rights and confidentiality issues for geospatial data dissemination.
– Provenance, persistent identifiers, versioning, interfaces, or workflow for geospatial data stewardship.
– Issues in active archiving and long-term archiving of geospatial data.
– Geospatial data stewardship roles of stakeholder organizations, partners, or collaborators.
– Developing and deploying standards, infrastructure, tools, or services for geospatial data management.
Detailed submission guidelines can be found here, and interested authors should send an initial abstract of less than 500 words to the Guest Editor, Dr. Robert R. Downs (rdowns@ciesin.columbia.edu), by 15 November 2014.
We would like to point you towards an article in our WDS-related news page that appeared in the October 2014 newsletter of the new Variability of the Sun and Its Terrestrial Impact (VarSITI) programme of the Scientific Committee on Solar–Terrestrial Physics (SCOSTEP). Written by Takashi Watanabe (Senior Advisor) and Rorie Edmunds (Programme Officer) of the WDS International Programme Office, the article points to strengthening the ties between WDS and SCOSTEP—both Interdisciplinary Bodies of ICSU—through the VarSITI programme.
The World Glacier Monitoring Service, Zurich (WDS Regular Member) has recently completed a new release of its Fluctuations of Glaciers database.
The current version comprises reported observations on glacier changes up until the observation period 2011–2012 including:
– 5,300 glaciological balances from 413 glaciers
– 920 geodetic balances from 446 glaciers
– 44,000 front variations from 2,340 glaciers
– 420 special event reports from 295 glaciers
For a detailed overview and quick data access, please use the WGMS MetaData Browser.
