IMPACTful Informatics

Informatics seeks to balance both the human and machine sides of information, turning data and information into knowledge that is useful for society and applications. It also informs data conservation best practices by taking user perspectives into account, ensuring that data is accessible and usable to all audiences.

The IMPACT informatics group is user-driven and strives to create innovative and creative solutions that bring people together to improve collaboration and communication. The IMPACT informatics group is made up of Earth and atmospheric scientists who are uniquely positioned to bridge the gap between the user community and the data stewards. The team is effective in translating user needs into actionable recommendations and is accountable to NASA, the data centers, and a wide range of user communities.

Kaylin Bugbee leads the informatics team at IMPACT. She gives some history on the Informatics group:

"The IMPACT informatics concept originated from a small project supporting President Obama’s Climate Data Initiative and has grown into a number of activities supporting NASA’s Earth Science Data System. The IMPACT informatics group stands in a unique position to accelerate the progress of open science by building recommendations, relationships, and collaborations that support it."

IMPACT has a portfolio of projects centered around informatics. These projects focus on:

• improving metadata quality to help users find, understand, and use data more quickly and easily;
• creating value-added data curation services and documentation to lower the barrier for new users;
• building relationships with various collaborators including federal agencies and private sector organizations; and
• improving and standardizing data conservation processes.

To describe informatics to others, an infographic has been created the presents the broad range of IMPACT projects that focus on informatics.

Jenny Wood, a member of the Informatics team, who developed the infographic shown here describes her take on the efforts of the informatics team in this way:

"The work we’re doing is really important because our overall goal is to meet the needs of the user, so we’re not only working to make data more useful but also supporting current science research. With so many projects collaborating towards the same goal, it allows us to learn and grow towards more efficient ways to do this kind of work where we bring technology and science together."

While the infographic itself gives an overall description of each project, in future blog posts we will be highlighting several projects and the ways in which their day-to-day work is beneficial for Earth scientists. Some brief examples of coming highlights include: the SNWG project that recently sent out a survey to federal agencies to identify user needs; the ARC project that curates thousands of metadata records to ensure that they are correct and discoverable for users; and the APT project that is building a tool to standardize Algorithm Theoretical Basis Documents across all NASA data products. Look for these and other future posts.

Check out Kaylin's LinkedIn profile.