World Data System Asia-Oceania Conference 2019

Wang J. L.^1*  Takashi Watanabe ²

1. State Key Laboratory of Resources and Environmental Information System, Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China;

2. International programs office of World Data System (WDS), Tokyo 184-8795, Japan

The World Data System Asia-Oceania Conference 2019 (WDS-AO 2019) was held in Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research (IGSNRR), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Beijing, on May 7–8. The conference was hosted by World Data System of the International Science Council (ISC-WDS), organized by IGSNRR, CAS, and jointly organized by World Data Center for Renewable Resources and Environment (Beijing), Global Change Research Data Publishing & Repository (Beijing), Chinese Astronomical Data Center (Beijing), Chinese Space Science Data Center (Beijing), World Data Center for Geophysics, (Beijing), Cold and Arid Regions Science Data Center at Lanzhou, World Data Centre for Microorganisms (Beijing), World Data Center-Oceanography, (Tianjin), National Earth System Science Data Sharing Infrastructure of China (Beijing).

This conference aims at strengthening collaboration in the Asia-Oceania region to reinforce WDS-oriented activities, exchanging advanced technologies to data management, pushing the interoperability in WDS community, developing and expanding the world data center in the Asia-Oceania region, exchanging experiences on successful WDS trustworthy data-repositories certification and supporting the science and technology projects of ISC.

The honorary chairmen of the conference, SUN Honglie, CAS Member, SUN Jiulin, Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE) Member, WANG Ruidan, deputy director of the National Science and Technology Infrastructure Center of China, WANG Shuzhi, deputy director of the General Office of CAS, Representatives of ISC-WDS Asia-Oceania Regional Science Data Centers, totally, more than 120 experts and scholars from 14 countries, including China, Japan, Australia, Russia, Netherlands, United Kingdom, Mongolia, Pakistan, India, Thailand, Nepal, Bangladesh, Bolivia and Sudan, participated in the conference, as showed in Figure 1.

The co-chairmen of the conference, LIAO Xiaohan, deputy director of IGSNRR, CAS, and professor Takashi Watanabe, Kyoto University, Japan, co-hosted the opening ceremony. On behalf of IGSNRR, CAS, LIAO Xiaohan welcomed the guests, the representatives from the ISC-WDS Science Committee and all the experts and scholars attending the conference. He said, IGSNRR is the largest Geographical Science institute in the world and also is the only one institution with two regular members in a legal entity on the world data system. Furthermore, the world data center for renewable resources and environment was founded in 1988, which is one of the earliest Chinese data centers jointing in WDS, Global Change Research Data Publishing & Repository was founded in 2014, which is the unique publishing and open sharing unit in WDS that links metadata, entity data and data papers. On behalf of CAS, WANG Shuzhi delivered a welcome speech. He reviewed and introduced the development history of the science database of the CAS and the WDS Data Centers established relying on CAS. He also pointed that CAS attaches great importance to the work of open sharing of scientific data, in China, 7 are from CAS in the current 9 regular members of the world data system. WANG Ruidan introduced the development history of the National Science and Technology Infrastructure of China and the promulgation of the “Scientific Data Management Measures”, and pointed out that it is expected to establish a closer cooperation relationship with the WDS Data Center in the future. LI Guoqing, a former member of the WDS Science Committee and a professor at the Aerospace Information Research Institute, CAS, introduced the background of the conference. WANG Juanle, who acted as secretary-general of the conference, chaired the organizing committee, and is a professor in IGSNRR, CAS, introduced the organization of the conference.

Sandy Harrison, chairman of the WDS Scientific Committee, gave a keynote speech on “World Data System-Trustworthy Data Services for Global Science”. She gave background information on WDS including its establishment, goals, and principles, introduced scientific committee members and WDS members, and discussed future priorities of WDS.  SHI Lei, National Science and Technology Infrastructure Center gave a keynote speech on “Enhancing Scientific Data Management in China”, introducing the overall situation of scientific data development in China, problems in current scientific data management in China, and relevant provisions of “Measures for Scientific Data Management”, etc.

The conference organized six sessions during the two days. On the agenda there were discussions of international collaboration on data, data for geophysics and space science, the development of data-sharing systems, marine and polar data, data processing and evaluation, and a WDS forum. A total of 33 oral presentations and 12 posters were displayed in the conference.

The co-chair of the conference, professor Takashi Watanabe, pointed out in the summary after the conference that the priorities of WDS in the future include: (1) Expanding WDS members in terms of subject scope and geographical scope, encouraging more scientific data centers in Asia and Oceania to join WDS. (2) Strengthening the exchange of core Trust Seal certification experience of scientific data center, and promote more scientific data centers to pass the certification. (3) Strengthening the cooperation with WDS International Technology Office and promoting the introduction of information technology of data. (4) Strengthening the cooperation with ISC Regional Office for Asia–Pacific (ROAP). (5) Promoting the cooperation between the Asian region and Future Earth and other international organizations such as the Committee on Data (CODATA) of the ISC.

The World Data System (WDS) is an Interdisciplinary Body of the International Science Council (ISC; formerly ICSU) created by its 29th General Assembly in 2008. Its predecessor, the World Data Center (WDC) system, was founded in 1957. The mission of WDS is to support the long-term vision of ISC, to provide long-term management and equal access with quality assurance for scientific data, data services, products and information among a series of subjects such as natural sciences, social sciences and the humanities, to promote compliance with mutually agreed data standards and practices, to provide mechanisms to facilitate data access, and to advance its goals with “data sharing principles”. In order to promote cooperation among WDS data centers and more stakeholders in Asia-Oceania region, the World Data System Asia-Oceania Conference 2017 was held on September 27–29, 2017 at Kyoto University, Japan, under the guidance of World Data System of the International Science Council (ISC-WDS) Scientific Committee.