Permafrost Open Data System (PODS)

加拿大西北地区（NWT）的不连续永久冻土区是地球上变暖最快的地区之一。前所未有的永久冻土融化速度正在改变土地覆盖，改变水的流量、储存和质量，并引发了对北方水资源未来可用性和质量的严重新担忧。决策者迫切需要基于科学的预测工具和用户驱动的缓解和适应战略来有效应对。然而，尽管有大量新的研究和监测举措旨在了解广泛的永久冻土融化的驱动过程、速率、模式、反馈和影响，但这些举措之间明显缺乏协调，因此在如何收集、质量控制、存储和获取数据方面很少或根本没有标准化。因此，这些数据中的很大一部分对于更大的社区来说是不可用的，或者由于缺乏元数据或其他不一致而无法使用。因此，管理和政策决策继续由稀疏的、临时的、不一致的数据集提供信息。作为直接回应，我们提出了“永久冻土开放数据系统（PODS）”。生态系统将建立一个综合、灵活的系统，最大限度地提高与永久冻土有关的数据的质量、数量、可用性和效用。具体而言，PODS将与数据生产者和用户组成广泛的网络，共同开发标准化的数据模板和格式，以及查询、可视化、分析和共享关键、易于使用的数据集的工具。这将填补北部地区科学/技术能力的持续差距，这种差距阻碍了我们在西北地区政府和地方和区域土著政府中的项目合作伙伴实现关键数据的生成和管理目标，并有效地将其动员到急需数据的地方。通过以北方为基础的科学/技术领导和持续的社区参与来解决这一差距将直接支持决策、谨慎投资、适应性风险管理，并将有助于建立一个以北方为基础的科学领袖社区。

The discontinuous permafrost region of Canada's Northwest Territories (NWT) is one of the most rapidly warming on Earth. Unprecedented rates of permafrost thaw are transforming land covers, changing the flow, storage and quality of water, and raising serious new concerns about the future availability and quality of northern water resources. Decision makers urgently require science-based predictive tools and user-driven mitigation and adaptation strategies to respond effectively. However, despite the large number of new research and monitoring initiatives aimed at understanding the driving processes, rates, patterns, feedbacks and impacts of widespread permafrost thaw, coordination among such initiatives is remarkably absent, and as a result there is little or no standardisation of how data are collected, quality controlled, stored and accessed, and a large proportion of these data is therefore unavailable to the larger community or unusable owing to the dearth of metadata or other inconsistencies. As a result, management and policy decisions continue to be informed by sparse, ad hoc, inconsistent datasets. In direct response we propose the "Permafrost Open Data System (PODS)". PODS will produce an integrated, flexible system to maximise the quality, quantity, availability and utility of permafrost-relevant data. Specifically, PODS will engage a broad network of data producers and users to co-develop standardised data templates and formats, and tools to query, visualise, analyse and share critical, readily-usable datasets. This will fill a persistent gap in northern-based science/technical capacity that prevents our project partners in the Government of the Northwest Territories and in local and regional Indigenous governments from meeting their goals in the generation and stewardship of critical data, and in its efficient mobilisation to where it is critically needed. Addressing this gap through northern-based science/technical leadership and sustained community engagement will directly support decision-making, prudent investment, adaptive risk management, and will help to build a community of northern-based science leaders.