[okfn-discuss] OKFN & Environment Data

Fri Oct 12 09:12:04 UTC 2012

Thanks for starting this conversation James! :-)

A while back we started a Working Group on Climate Data which is
currently 'incubating' (cc'ing Lisa Evans and David Jones who were
involved in this group).

If there was enough interest and someone who was willing to champion
the group, then we could activate it again!

http://wiki.okfn.org/Working_Groups/climatescience
http://okfn.org/wg/

For background information, here are a few links related to our
previous work in this area:

http://blog.okfn.org/2007/11/20/the-ipcc-data-distribution-centre-environmental-data-licensing/
http://blog.okfn.org/2009/12/05/climate-change-climate-sceptics-and-open-data/
http://blog.okfn.org/2010/01/28/clear-climate-code-and-data/
http://blog.okfn.org/2010/02/24/a-tour-of-climate-data-at-ckan/
http://wiki.okfn.org/Open_Environmental_Data
http://wiki.okfn.org/Open_Environmental_Data/Policy
http://lists.okfn.org/pipermail/open-science/2009-December/000133.html
http://thedatahub.org/group/climatedata

I think that if we were to have a climate WG it would be good to have
a few specific aims and objectives, e.g.:

  * Organising events/meetups - e.g. via
http://www.meetup.com/OpenKnowledgeFoundation/
  * Continuing to maintain the registry of climate data on CKAN -
http://thedatahub.org/group/climatedata
  * Policy/advocacy work to encourage open licensing of climate data
to key organisations and stakeholders. (Previous correspondence I had
with the IPCC indicated that they were very keen to see more
institutions change their licensing policies to be more open, but
didn't have the bandwidth to negotiate this with each data
contributor.)

J.

On Thu, Oct 11, 2012 at 11:37 PM, Rafael Pezzi <rafael.pezzi at ufrgs.br> wrote:
> Hi James and everyone else,
>
> Unfortunately I have not been to OKFestival, nor seen James Cameron and
> Rosling's speeches. Nevertheless, I am deeply interested in open
> Environmental Data together with some other folks from Brazil.
>
> We are getting organized to build an open source ecology for environmental
> and weather data collection, visualization, interpretation. We are starting
> to build some prototype weather station and air/water monitoring tools based
> on Arduino and alikes, to be released under permissive licenses. All
> methodology based on open source software and whenever possible, open
> source/libre hardware. We aim to use the data for research and education
> (urban micro-climate simulation/interpretation, environmental education,
> climate change elucidation/mitigation). Our plans is to have one station of
> these in each school.
>
> Once we have our first sensor network (prototype, at the university)
> working, we'll need protocols for data transmission, authentication, data
> storage, visualization and so on. I am not an expert in none of these - help
> and suggestions are greatly appreciated. The project is open for
> contributions from anyone and we are open for partnerships. We are in lack
> of good practices for open data publishing. We would like to get it somewhat
> right from the beginning.
>
> Our project page is mainly in Portuguese, anyway, here are the links to some
> information that I have been collecting on these issues - some descriptions
> have been pasted in English, though. Modules: , Platforms , References.
>
> This is the first big project of a center being created with the purpose of
> using, studying, developing, and sharing open source technology at our
> university, in southern Brazil.
>
> Please let me know if this conversation has been moved to another list.
>
> All the best,
> Rafael
>
>
>
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: James Smith <james at floppy.org.uk>
> Date: Fri, Oct 5, 2012 at 12:17 PM
> Subject: [okfn-discuss] OKFN & Environment Data
> To: okfn-discuss at lists.okfn.org
>
>
> Hi everyone,
>
> If you saw James Cameron or Hans Rosling's speeches at OKFestival, you'll
> have heard them both call for Open Data to tackle environmental problems,
> particularly around opening up emissions data and so on.
>
> There is a huge list of things that could be done, from opening up
> environmental methodologies (AMEE recently opened their datasets, for
> example), to improving scientific climate data, to national emissions
> reporting, to visualisation, and there are some things going on in all these
> areas already.
>
> I know a few people have been talking about maybe doing some of this within
> OKFN, but I thought I'd try to pull the conversation together so we can all
> work together instead of stepping on each others' toes!
>
> So, who's interested in this sort of thing, and what would you be interested
> in doing? Are you already doing it? Are there parts that are more or less
> appropriate for OKFN's mission? What fits, and what should be handled
> elsewhere?
>
> We can discuss here initially, but could then move to a smaller list; there
> are some fairly dormant-seeming OKFN WGs and lists that might be relevant
> homes for the conversation, and we also have the cleanweb-uk list which is
> full of people interested in this sort of thing (see
> http://cleanweb.org.uk).
>
> cheers,
> James
>
>
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-- 
Jonathan Gray

Head of Community
The Open Knowledge Foundation
http://www.okfn.org

http://twitter.com/jwyg