Investment, innovation, and governance take top billing
From oceanographers to meteorologists, NOAA’s scientific community sees data growing in quantity, value, and usefulness. So, NOAA sets aside a week each year to focus on the future of data management. The agenda for the 11th NOAA Environmental Environmental Data Management Workshop (EDMW), hosted by NOAA’s Environmental Data Management Committee (EDMC), emphasizes data investment, innovation, and governance.
NOAA’s commitment to strengthen the uses and quality of its environmental data is ongoing. The 2021 virtual conference for NOAA employees and affiliates includes workshops, networking opportunities, and a slate of presentations around the theme “Maximizing the Value of NOAA Data through Investment, Innovation, and Governance.”
NOAA’s work to collect, process, and archive quality environmental data—often in increasingly large amounts and from new or emerging technologies—is a core concern of NCEI, the data archive for NOAA.
NOAA Data Management
As an organization, NOAA reaches into many fields of science and relies on diverse technologies—from remotely operated vehicles to solar ultraviolet imagers on satellites. The EDMW gives NOAA staff the opportunity to see commonalities in its diverse data holdings and learn from one another about ways to manage and maximize the information.
Among the topics on the agenda for the 2021 summer workshop are:
- Transformative technologies and strategies to make NOAA’s environmental data collection AI-ready
- NOAA's efforts to better understand and engage users of our data and information
- Applications used to manage metadata inventories, repackage data in widely used data formats, streamline data archival processes, or visualize applications
- GIS technology and its use in data management, access, dissemination, and visualization
- The future of metadata
- NOAA’s cloud strategies
NCEI at EDMW 2021
Many NCEI staff in leadership roles will participate in EDMW 2021, either as attendees or presenters. They include:
- Mary Wohlgemuth, NCEI Director
- Rich Baldwin, NCEI Chief of Data Access Branch
- Mike Brewer, NCEI Chief of the Climate Information Services Branch
- Ken Casey, NCEI Deputy Chief of Data Stewardship Division
- Hernan Garcia, Interim Director of Alaska Regional Climate Services
- Kirsten Larsen, NCEI Chief of Marine Ecosystems Section
- Sharon Mesick, NCEI Chief of Coasts, Oceans, and Geophysics Information Services and Interim Southern Regional Climate Services Director
- Nancy Ritchey, NCEI Chief of Archive Branch
- Monica Youngman, NCEI Chief of Data Stewardship Division
Plenary sessions involve other NOAA leaders: Dr. Stephen Volz, Assistant Administrator of the NOAA National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Service; Dr. Louis Uccellini, Assistant Administrator of the NOAA National Weather Service; and Monica Grasso, NOAA Chief Economist. All sessions are internal to NOAA staff and its affiliates.
