Barbour strikes back…

http://theconversation.com/what-was-missing-in-australias-1-9-billion-infrastructure-announcement-96723 

Data Management in the Long Tail: Science, Software, and Service

Data Management in the Long Tail: Science, Software, and Service

Christine L. Borgman, Milena S. Golshan, Ashley E. Sands, Jillian C. Wallis, Rebekah L. Cummings, Peter T. Darch, Bernadette M. Randles

Abstract

Scientists in all fields face challenges in managing and sustaining access to their research data. The larger and longer term the research project, the more likely that scientists are to have resources and dedicated staff to manage their technology and data, leaving those scientists whose work is based on smaller and shorter term projects at a disadvantage. The volume and variety of data to be managed varies by many factors, only two of which are the number of collaborators and length of the project. As part of an NSF project to conceptualize the Institute for Empowering Long Tail Research, we explored opportunities offered by Software as a Service (SaaS). These cloud-based services are popular in business because they reduce costs and labor for technology management, and are gaining ground in scientific environments for similar reasons. We studied three settings where scientists conduct research in small and medium-sized laboratories. Two were NSF Science and Technology Centers (CENS and C-DEBI) and the third was a workshop of natural reserve scientists and managers. These laboratories have highly diverse data and practices, make minimal use of standards for data or metadata, and lack resources for data management or sustaining access to their data, despite recognizing the need. We found that SaaS could address technical needs for basic document creation, analysis, and storage, but did not support the diverse and rapidly changing needs for sophisticated domain-specific tools and services. These are much more challenging knowledge infrastructure requirements that require long-term investments by multiple stakeholders.

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.2218/ijdc.v11i1.428 

The ups and downs of data sharing in science

NATURE | EDITORIAL :

The ups and downs of data sharing in science

 Pooling clinical details helps doctors to diagnose rare diseases — but more sharing is needed.

21 June 2016

http://www.nature.com/news/the-ups-and-downs-of-data-sharing-in-science-1.20124

Sydney Water, could cut pipe maintenance costs for water mains by a fifth - using data & modelling techniques

Great story half way down this page about the use of data by Sydney Water to reduce it's costs.

http://www.startupsmart.com.au/government-and-regulation/nictas-government-innovation-drive-funded-or-not.html

Providing public value

NICTA was set up to encourage collaboration between world-class ICT researchers — both home-grown and imported — and Australian industry. There’s much still to do in that regard. But its focus on large-scale national challenges has also led it to deliver public value in transport planning, health, emergency services, agriculture and more.

“They’re areas where we have huge public expenditure,” said Robertson. “Transport alone I think is about 14% of GDP, and if we can make that 10% more efficient, which we can, and we’ve demonstrated that in areas where we’ve engaged with transport companies, then that’s a huge impact, because that 10% can be applied elsewhere for greater benefit.”

He says the Intelligent Pipes project, in partnership with Sydney Water, could cut pipe maintenance costs for water mains by a fifth using sophisticated modelling techniques.

“The way we did that was we looked at all the data they had for their pipes — they had quite a lot — and looked at which pipes had historically failed and the data for that, and then used machine learning and data analytics to predict which pipes are going to fail next. And it turns out in broad terms, we can predict of the failures ahead of time much more often than they could using conventional techniques.”

The savings to Sydney Water alone are several times the cost of running the project; with the water mains costing well over $1 billion to maintain Australia wide, the gains from widespread deployment would be in the hundreds of millions.

CSIRO Milestone Day - Australia's new Marine Research Vessel arrives in Hobart

Today (Tuesday 9 September) is a milestone day for CSIRO as Australia’s new Marine National Facility research vessel Investigator arrives in Hobart.

 

The Marine National Facility is owned and operated by CSIRO on behalf of the nation, and Toni Moate, Executive Director of CSIRO’s Future Research Vessel Project, will be on site to welcome the ship to Hobart following its departure from Singapore on 24 August.

With almost $20 million worth of scientific equipment, the 94m ship is capable of mapping the sea floor at any depth, collecting weather data 20km into the atmosphere, analysing fish species with sonar and revealing the composition of the sea bed 100m below the sea floor. During the next five months the wharf will be a hive of activity for the final fit out of scientific equipment on board the ship and CSIRO will organise the official Welcome to Port event during this time.

You can follow the action on CSIRO’s Twitter account @csironews and by using the hashtag #RVInvestigator or watch video of the voyage from Singapore and find out more on the Investigator blog at http://csirofrvblog.com/

Opening Up Scholarly communications: Jisc & CNI conference - slides etc are available

Jisc and CNI conference 2014

Opening up scholarly communications

The 2014 Jisc/CNI conference brought together leading experts from the UK, US and Europe to explore the theme of opening up scholarly communications through the four key themes of:

• policy
• data
• access
• infrastructure

This event took place 10 July 2014

Slides available: http://www.jisc.ac.uk/events/jisc-and-cni-conference-2014-10-jul-2014