Permafrost Open Data System (PODS)

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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.