Challenges in the Evaluation of Observational Data Trustworthiness From a Data Producers Viewpoint (FAIR+)

Recent discussions in many scientific disciplines stress the necessity of “FAIR” data. FAIR data, however, does not necessarily include information on data trustworthiness, where trustworthiness comprises reliability, validity and provenience/provenance. This opens up the risk of misinterpreting scientific data, even though all criteria of “FAIR” are fulfilled. Especially applications such as secondary data processing, data blending, and joint interpretation or visualization efforts are affected. This paper intends to start a discussion in the scientific community about how to evaluate, describe, and implement trustworthiness in a standardized data evaluation approach and in its metadata description following the FAIR principles. It discusses exemplarily different assessment tools regarding soil moisture measurements, data processing and visualization and elaborates on which additional (metadata) information is required to increase the trustworthiness of data for secondary usage. Taking into account the perspectives of data collectors, providers and users, the authors identify three aspects of data trustworthiness that promote efficient data sharing: 1) trustworthiness of the measurement 2) trustworthiness of the data processing and 3) trustworthiness of the data integration and visualization. The paper should be seen as the basis for a community discussion on data trustworthiness for a scientifically correct secondary use of the data. We do not have the intention to replace existing procedures and do not claim completeness of reliable tools and approaches described. Our intention is to discuss several important aspects to assess data trustworthiness based on the data life cycle of soil moisture data as an example

Towards Interoperable Research Infrastructures for Environmental and Earth Sciences

This open access book summarises the latest developments on data management in the EU H2020 ENVRIplus project, which brought together more than 20 environmental and Earth science research infrastructures into a single community. It provides readers with a systematic overview of the common challenges faced by research infrastructures and how a ‘reference model guided’ engineering approach can be used to achieve greater interoperability among such infrastructures in the environmental and earth sciences. The 20 contributions in this book are structured in 5 parts on the design, development, deployment, operation and use of research infrastructures. Part one provides an overview of the state of the art of research infrastructure and relevant e-Infrastructure technologies, part two discusses the reference model guided engineering approach, the third part presents the software and tools developed for common data management challenges, the fourth part demonstrates the software via several use cases, and the last part discusses the sustainability and future directions

Towards Interoperable Research Infrastructures for Environmental and Earth Sciences

This open access book summarises the latest developments on data management in the EU H2020 ENVRIplus project, which brought together more than 20 environmental and Earth science research infrastructures into a single community. It provides readers with a systematic overview of the common challenges faced by research infrastructures and how a ‘reference model guided’ engineering approach can be used to achieve greater interoperability among such infrastructures in the environmental and earth sciences. The 20 contributions in this book are structured in 5 parts on the design, development, deployment, operation and use of research infrastructures. Part one provides an overview of the state of the art of research infrastructure and relevant e-Infrastructure technologies, part two discusses the reference model guided engineering approach, the third part presents the software and tools developed for common data management challenges, the fourth part demonstrates the software via several use cases, and the last part discusses the sustainability and future directions

Two glaciers and one sedimentary sink: the competing role of the Aare and the Valais glaciers in filling an overdeepened trough inferred from provenance analysis

The extent and distribution of glaciers on the Swiss Plateau during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) can be determined from the geological record. However, similar reconstructions for the glaciations that preceded the LGM are far more difficult to be made due to the destruction of suitable sedimentary records through recurring glaciations or due to the inaccessibility of preserved records. Here, we explored Quaternary sediments that were deposited during the Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 8 glaciation at least around 250 ka, and which were recovered in a drilling that was sunk into an overdeepened bedrock trough west of Bern (Switzerland). We analyzed the sediment bulk chemical composition of the deposits to investigate the supply of the material to the area by either the Aare Glacier, the Saane Glacier, or the Valais Glacier, and we complement this investigation with the results of heavy mineral analyses and geochemical information from detrital garnet. The potential confluence of the Valais and the Aare glaciers in the Bern area makes this location ideal for such an analysis. We determined the sediment bulk chemical signal of the various lithological units in the central Swiss Alps where the glaciers originated, which we used as endmembers for our provenance analysis. We then combined the results of this fingerprinting with the existing information on the sedimentary succession and its deposition history. This sedimentary suite is composed of two sequences, Sequence A (lower) and Sequence B (upper), both of which comprise a basal till that is overlain by lacustrine sediments. The till at the base of Sequence A was formed by the Aare Glacier. The overlying lacustrine deposits of an ice-contact lake were mainly supplied by the Aare Glacier. The basal till in Sequence B was also formed by the Aare Glacier. For the lacustrine deposits in Sequence B, the heavy mineral and garnet geochemical data indicate that the sediment was supplied by the Aare and the Saane glaciers. We use these findings for a paleogeographic reconstruction. During the time when Sequence A and the basal till in Sequence B were deposited, the Aare Glacier dominated the area. This strongly contrasts with the situation during the LGM, when the Aare Glacier was deflected by the Valais Glacier towards the northeast. The Valais Glacier was probably less extensive during MIS 8, but it was potentially presentin the area, and it could have been essential for damming a lake in which the material supplied by the Aare and the Saane glaciers accumulated. In conclusion, combining provenance with sedimentological data, we could document how sediment was supplied to the investigated overdeepened basin during the MIS 8 glacial period and how glaciers were arranged in a way that was markedly different from the LGM

Volume 1

"Europe’s Lost Frontiers was the largest directed archaeological research project undertaken in Europe to investigate the inundated landscapes of the Early Holocene North Sea – the area frequently referred to as ‘Doggerland’. Funded through a European Research Council Advanced Grant (project number 670518), the project ran from 2015 to 2021, and involved more than 30 academics, representing institutions spread geographically from Ireland to China. A vast area of the seabed was mapped, and multiple ship expeditions were launched to retrieve sediment cores from the valleys of the lost prehistoric landscapes of the North Sea. This data has now been analysed to provide evidence of how the land was transformed in the face of climate change and rising sea levels. This volume is the first in a series of monographs dedicated to the analysis and interpretation of data generated by the project. As a precursor to the publication of the detailed results, it provides the context of the study and method statements. Later volumes will present the mapping, palaeoenvironment, geomorphology and modelling programmes of Europe’s Lost Frontiers. The results of the project confirm that these landscapes, long held to be inaccessible to archaeology, can be studied directly and provide an archaeological narrative. This data will become increasingly important at a time when contemporary climate change and geo-political crises are pushing development within the North Sea at an unprecedented rate, and when the opportunities to explore this unique, heritage landscape may be significantly limited in the future.

Volume 1

"Europe’s Lost Frontiers was the largest directed archaeological research project undertaken in Europe to investigate the inundated landscapes of the Early Holocene North Sea – the area frequently referred to as ‘Doggerland’. Funded through a European Research Council Advanced Grant (project number 670518), the project ran from 2015 to 2021, and involved more than 30 academics, representing institutions spread geographically from Ireland to China. A vast area of the seabed was mapped, and multiple ship expeditions were launched to retrieve sediment cores from the valleys of the lost prehistoric landscapes of the North Sea. This data has now been analysed to provide evidence of how the land was transformed in the face of climate change and rising sea levels. This volume is the first in a series of monographs dedicated to the analysis and interpretation of data generated by the project. As a precursor to the publication of the detailed results, it provides the context of the study and method statements. Later volumes will present the mapping, palaeoenvironment, geomorphology and modelling programmes of Europe’s Lost Frontiers. The results of the project confirm that these landscapes, long held to be inaccessible to archaeology, can be studied directly and provide an archaeological narrative. This data will become increasingly important at a time when contemporary climate change and geo-political crises are pushing development within the North Sea at an unprecedented rate, and when the opportunities to explore this unique, heritage landscape may be significantly limited in the future.

e-mission: an open source, extensible platform for human mobility systems

Transportation is the single largest source of carbon emissions in the US. Decarbonizing it is challenging because it depends on individual behaviors, which in turn, depend on local land use planning. The interdisciplinary field of Computational Mobility, focusing on collecting, analysing and influencing human travel behavior, can frame solutions to this challenge.Innovation flows in interdisciplinary fields are bi-directional. The flow to the domain is focused on building a strong foundation for methodological improvements. As the improvements are deployed, they result in use-inspired computational research. This temporal dependency results in our initial focus on the modularity, accuracy and reproducibility of e-mission, an extensible platform for instrumenting human mobility. This open source platform has a modular architecture that supports power efficient duty cycling using virtual sensors, a read-only data model and a pipeline with novel algorithm adaptations for smartphone sensing.We also perform the first empirical evaluations of smartphone-based platforms in this domain. The architectural evaluation is based on three real world deployments: a classic travel diary, a crowdsourcing initiative, and a behavioral study. The accuracy evaluation is based on an novel procedure that uses artificial trips and multiple parallel phones to mitigate concerns over privacy, context sensitive power consumption and inherent sensing error. Data collected from three artifical timelines was used to evaluate the trajectory, segmentation and classification accuracies vs. power for various configurations.On computational side, challenges derived from the deployments can contribute to ongoing CS research in privacy, trustworthiness, incentivization and decision making. On the mobility side, this enables methodological innovations such as Agile Urban Planning for prototyping infrastructure changes

Helmholtz Portfolio Theme Large-Scale Data Management and Analysis (LSDMA)

The Helmholtz Association funded the "Large-Scale Data Management and Analysis" portfolio theme from 2012-2016. Four Helmholtz centres, six universities and another research institution in Germany joined to enable data-intensive science by optimising data life cycles in selected scientific communities. In our Data Life cycle Labs, data experts performed joint R&D together with scientific communities. The Data Services Integration Team focused on generic solutions applied by several communities