[open-science] Working Group on Open Data in Science

Fri May 27 05:53:05 UTC 2011

Hello,

I am a researcher based at the University of Leeds and I've been lurking on the list for a shortwhile and catching up a bit by browsing the archive. My background is in computational geography and I am part of a collaborative effort trying to develop geographical simulation models with a focus on demography and socio-economics. The vision is to have a model of the world that we can use like a magical wizards crystal ball to understand our alternative futures and how we might make some more likely to come about than others. It could be argued to be a grand science challenge. I leave it deliberately vague and to your imaginations as to the various scales and foci of the simulation models and how they become unified. There are lots of small steps to this work and it has to be a large scale collaborative e-Science effort to make significant progress. Anyway, a major issue concerns data and the feeds of it into, around and out of the simulation models. That is why I am interested in the working group and collaborating via this list in particular. If you have similar interests, then please get in touch.

I am trying my best to make things and keep them open, but inevitably, some of the data I use is not open. I am trying to keep a distinction between the two tracks of simulation model data, the open one and the other one. Still, I appreciate that open is not a black and white issue and there are shades of grey.

Best wishes,

Andy
http://www.leeds.ac.uk/people/a.turner