Collaborative Research: AOC: Monitoring, Modeling and Memory: Dynamics of Data and Knowledge in Scientific Cyberinfrastructures

长期以来，科学家和科学支持者一直致力于改善科学数据的共享、重复使用、存储和检索。今天，努力的重点是先进的“网络基础设施”：使用联网的计算机、数据库和组织来弥合不同科学学科之间的鸿沟。网络基础设施分为三个主要活动。首先，大量的自动传感器监测感兴趣的对象，如生态系统和地球气候，产生大量数字化数据。其次，在许多领域，计算机模型已经取代了实验室实验，成为数据收集、预测和决策的主要手段。第三，越来越多的数据资源(科学记忆)现在是可用的，但往往以许多不兼容的格式分布在数千个研究地点和机构。为了使网络基础设施使科学能够发挥其变革潜力，网络基础设施设计者需要更好的方法来理解科学家在实践中如何实际创建和共享数据，以及他们如何利用这些数据创造新的知识。为了对数据实践进行实证调查，该项目考察了四个大型网络基础设施工作：长期生态研究网络、嵌入式网络传感中心、水和环境研究系统网络以及地球系统建模框架。在每种情况下，调查人员都将研究网络基础设施如何用于监控、建模和记忆。这些项目涉及多个学科，涉及三个与气候变化有关的重要领域：生态和环境、水文学和水资源管理以及地球系统科学。在进行该项目时，研究人员将开发分布式民族志、协作历史和多模式网络分析的创新方法。除了已公布的研究结果外，该项目还将出版一本“最佳实践”手册，旨在指导网络基础设施中的数据实践和协调。该项目将与致力于加强妇女在计算机领域的作用的组织合作，为美国印第安人社区建立数据库系统，并让其他经常被忽视的群体参与信息基础设施的发展。因此，该项目将为包容性的、理论上丰富的、实际参与的网络基础设施社会科学奠定基础。

Scientists and supporters of science have long worked to improve the sharing, reuse, storage, and retrieval of scientific data. Today, efforts focus on advanced "cyberinfrastructure": using networked computers, databases, and organizations to bridge divides among diverse scientific disciplines. Cyberinfrastructure divides into three main activities. First, large numbers of automatic sensors monitor subjects of interest, such as ecosystems and Earth's climate, producing massive volumes of digitized data. Second, in many fields computer models have replaced laboratory experiments as the principal means of data collection, prediction, and decision-making. Third, increasingly vast data resources (scientific memory) are now available, but are often distributed across thousands of research sites and institutions, in numerous incompatible formats. For cyberinfrastructure-enabled science to deliver on its transformative potential, cyberinfrastructure designers need better ways of understanding how scientists actually create and share data in practice, and how they use it to create new knowledge. To investigate data practices empirically, this project examines four large cyberinfrastructure efforts: the Long Term Ecological Research Network, the Center for Embedded Network Sensing, the WATer and Environmental Research Systems Network, and the Earth System Modeling Framework. In each case, the investigators will study how cyberinfrastructure is used in monitoring, modeling, and memory. These projects spread across many disciplines addressing three important domains, all related to climate change concerns: ecology and environment; hydrology and water management; and earth system science. In conducting the project, the investigators will develop innovative methods of distributed ethnography, collaborative history, and multimodal network analysis. In addition to published findings, the project will produce a 'best practices' handbook meant to guide data practices and coordination in cyberinfrastructure. The project will partner with organizations working to enhance the role of women in computing; to build database systems for American Indian communities; and to engage other groups often ignored in information infrastructure development. The project will thus lay groundwork for an inclusive, theoretically rich, and practically engaged social science of cyberinfrastructure.