Enabling FAIR access to environmental data: The Research Software Engineer (RSE) role 

 

Ann Gledson, Research Software Engineer

The University of Manchester
 

https://slides.com/anngledson/fair-access-environment-data

FAIR Open Data

• Reduce repetition of data cleaning and wrangling tasks
• Focus more on key research questions
• Reproducibility -> Trust!
• Visibility:
  • E.g. Nature Scientific Data journal
  • Easy ingest to platforms: NERC Data centres
  • Citations
• Collaboration, communities and networking 
• Funding opportunities

Data wrangling

FAIR data principles

Nature Scientific Data: principles

Credit: Scientists who share their data in a FAIR manner deserve appropriate credit. 

Re-use: Standardized and detailed descriptions make data easier to find and reuse. 

Quality: Critical evaluation is needed to verify experimental rigour.

Discovery: Scientists should be able to easily find datasets that are relevant. 

Open: Scientists work best when they can easily connect and collaborate.

Service: Committed to providing excellent service to both authors and readers.

(Full version: https://www.nature.com/sdata/about/principles)

Example project

Environment data

• Automatic Urban and Rural Network (AURN)
  • NOx, SO2, O3, NO2, PM10, PM2.5
• ​Medical and Environmental Data (Mash-up) Infrastructure (MEDMI)
  • Meteorological: temp, pressure, dewpoint temp, relative humidity
  • Pollens: alnus, ambrosia, artemesia, ..., urtica
• ​​European Monitoring and Evaluation Programme (EMEP)
  • Model forecast data
  • ​NOx, NO2, SO2, O3, PM10, PM2.5
• ​Complex extraction process:
  • Multiple data sources
  • Missing data (e.g. sensor down-time)
  • Variable UK area coverage

Shared Data

NERC Digital Solutions Hub

• 5-7 RSE roles at UoM
  • Technical oversight
  • 4-6 to work with the NERC Data Centre RSEs
  • JASMIN Infrastructure RSE
     
• Aims:
  • Convert a broad range of hub requirements into a set of tools that allow FAIR access to existing and future datasets.
  • Understand ways of working and ensure that the resulting tool-sets are robust and accessible for all.

Open Data links

• FAIR Data: https://www.go-fair.org/fair-principles/

• Data sharing platforms:

  • Zenodo: https://zenodo.org/

  • Figshare: https://figshare.com/

  • Dryad: https://datadryad.org/stash

• Open Science webinar - Helen Glaves (British Geological Survey):

  • https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCv8vRIuTxCP-DgNMCq9KxqA/videos​

Environment dataset links

• 2016-2019 environment datasets:
  • measurements (original and imputed)
    • https://zenodo.org/record/4416028
    • includes link to extraction and imputation tool set
  • regional estimations (from original and imputed)
    • https://zenodo.org/record/4475652
    • includes link to region_estimators tool
  • Scientific Data paper:
    • https://www.nature.com/articles/s41597-022-01135-6​
  • Visualisation Tool:
    • http://minethegaps.manchester.ac.uk/​