[ESIP-all] Workshop on Open Geospatial Science and the Decentralized Geospatial Web (April 3–4))

[Yuhan Douglas Rao]

Dear all,

I am sharing an upcoming workshop hosted by Dr. Taylor Oshan at the
University of Maryland, College Park. If you are interested in attending
this workshop, please reach out to Dr. Oshan (toshan at umd.edu) directly for
further details.

Best,
-Douglas

-------------------------------------------------------------
Greetings ESIP community,

I'm reaching out about an upcoming workshop opportunity at the University
of Maryland occurring April 3rd and 4th that will focus on *Open Geospatial
Science and the Decentralized Geospatial Web*.

The event will bring together 30ish folks from an array of backgrounds,
such as academia, industry, nonprofits, government, etc., to highlight the
current state of open geospatial science, introduce the decentralized web
and geospatial efforts in that realm, and then brainstorm fruitful ways to
integrate these domains. Some participants are already working at this
nexus of these topics but many will only have a background in one
particular area. So we are interested in participants that are interested
in learning and/or sharing. The workshop will provide all meals during the
1.5 days and the event will consist of short presentations, discussions,
and breaks for networking, all with an eye towards creating a research
agenda that will be disseminated as an executive summary on the event
website and potentially a short collaborative publication with all
participants invited as co-authors. Some travel support may be available.

We're aiming to include individuals with a broad span of interests,
including but not limited to: reproducibility, data accessibility, metadata
standards, web GIS, cloud computing, and cyberinfrastructure, geospatial
applications, and emerging decentralized technology.

There are still some spots available so please reach out to Dr. Taylor
Oshan (toshan at umd.edu) if you are interested or have any questions.

Below is some additional text about the motivation for the event.

All the best,
Taylor

----------------------Workshop Background------------------------

Open science has emerged as a top priority for ensuring the robustness of
the scientific enterprise, especially as research becomes increasingly
dependent on computational workflows and large heterogeneous data sources.
This is especially true for the geospatial sciences that are dependent upon
massive amounts of location-based data, such as remotely sensed images,
demographic profiles, environmental field samples, climate simulations,
land parcel and building footprint records, the status of telecommunication
and transportation infrastructure, and geotagged social media posts. Data
sources are continuously being combined and accumulated in order to conduct
complex analyses in support of decision-making where location matters. Some
examples include responding to natural disasters and extreme weather,
developing strategies for climate change mitigation and adaptation,
promoting sustainable, just, and optimized cities, and ensuring national
security.

 The full spectrum of “openness” is diverse and typically includes the
transparent use of data and methods, access to resources and training, and
inclusivity within the scientific process. Furthermore, the openness of
science is directly related to the important issues of reproducibility and
replicability (R&R). A lack of R&R is associated with: (i) the inability to
access the resources necessary for computational data-intensive workflows;
(ii) the inability to interact with research artifacts for veracity and
educational purposes; (iii) the inability to obtain the same or similar
results for the same or similar data and methods. One result is that the
pace of scientific progress is stifled because resources are not widely
available and it is challenging to learn from and build on the work of one
another. A recent report by the US National Academy of Sciences underscores
the gravity of the issue and recent attention has highlighted the
additional complexity for R&R in the geographical sciences. Great efforts
have been put towards increasing R&R in the geospatial sciences and science
more generally, yet the exponential growth in both the volume of data and
the demand for computing resources raises new challenges for ensuring the
geospatial sciences remain open.

In particular, decentralized practices and technology, such as web
protocols, blockchain, and smart contracts can increase the openness of the
geospatial sciences and facilitate reproducibility and replicability. For
instance, content-addressing helps avoid ‘link rot’ by allowing files to be
referenced by a unique hash based on the content of a file itself, rather
than location, so that the file can be sustainably referenced on the web
regardless of where it is stored. Content-addressing can also ensure file
integrity because a change in a file also changes the hash used to
reference it. Distributed systems for sharing files based on
content-addressing facilitates a more connected and optimal user-to-user
network of content delivery rather than a hub-and-spoke system of file
requests. Meanwhile, blockchain and smart contracts make it possible to
incorporate transparent, trustless, and consensus-based layers into the
data ecosystem. However, many decentralized technologies are still nascent
and their adoption, especially in the geospatial domain, are still limited.
Thus, an important and timely question is “How might an emerging
decentralized geospatial web support the geospatial sciences to become more
open, transparent, reproducible, and robust?”.

Towards answering this question, this workshop will bring together domain
experts from the geospatial sciences, open science best-practices, and the
decentralized web ecosystem to better understand the current
state-of-the-art and how these three areas can come together to imagine
possible future pathways for the next generation of open geospatial
science.

-------------------------------------------

-- 
[image: NCICS] <http://ncics.org/> Yuhan (Douglas) Rao
*Research Scientist*
Pronoun <https://www.mypronouns.org/what-and-why/>: he/him/his
North Carolina State University <http://ncsu.edu/>
North Carolina Institute for Climate Studies (NCICS) <https://ncics.org/>
151 Patton Ave, Asheville, NC 28801
e: yrao5 at ncsu.edu
o: +1 828 271 4903
Schedule a meeting with me <https://calendly.com/douglas_rao>*I choose
to work on a flexible schedule and across a number of time zones. My
apologies for sending emails outside of your working hours.*
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