Title: Collaborative Research: SAVI- Building a framework between the EU and the USA to harmonize data products relevant to global research infrastructures in the environmental field.
This award is designated as a Science Across Virtual Institutes (SAVI) award and is being co-funded by NSF?s Office of International Science and Engineering. Four US environmental observatories (National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON), Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI), Advanced Modular Incoherent Scatter Radar (AMISR) and collectively EarthScope, comprising USArray and the Plate Boundary Observatory (PBO), operated respectively by the Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology (IRIS) and UNAVCO) are working together with their respective counterparts from the European Union on developing common data policies and standards relevant to global research infrastructures in the environment field.
The project goals include developing new understanding through broad harmonization of data and constructing multi- discipline, synergistic data products that have wider societal importance. In addition, these activities will help the scientific community to better develop coupled models that better capture critical feedbacks and interactions of the earth system. These models are needed to help make these types of data more accessible to decision-makers at many levels.
Linking these existing programs provides a unique opportunity for early career researchers and students to learn in a multi-disciplinary environment and to benefit not only from the US participants but also their European counterparts. The observatories will be developing graduate and post-graduate courses and the workshops will seek to include early career scientists and students.
The proposed activities will focus on addressing societally relevant challenges. Through case studies, ways of harmonizing data will be investigated with the goal of making the data from these observatories easier to include in effective decision-making. Disasters, carbon and water will likely be the first set of issues addressed.
This program is creating opportunities for enhancing the career trajectories of a new generation of researchers in Europe and the U.S. The virtual institute is providing mechanisms for exposing early-career scientists to interdisciplinary, multi-institutional activities focused on environmental data and cyberinfrastructure; arming them with new scientific tools to address challenging questions in harmonizing environmental data to help in effective decision making; and showing them how international partnerships can help to solve global problems. It is recruiting a diverse set of US and European students to create collaborative networks of environmental data and cyberinfrastructure experts across these countries.
