BIG COMPANY PLAYS THE ROLE IN BIG DATA AND CLIMATE CHANGE
- Big Data vs. Climate Change project
On December 9, 2014, EMC Corporation, Pivotal and the Earthwatch Institute [1], in association with the Schoodic Institute [2] at Acadia National Park announced Big Data vs. Climate Change: EMC & Citizen Scientists Team Up. This program enables the study of interactions between nature and climate and promotes the engagement of citizen scientists using big data lakes, analytic tools and visualizations.
TRIGGER: LACK OF TANGIBLE AND ACTIONABLE DATA
Around the world, researchers and citizen scientists are collecting data on the impact of climate change on our environment. The data is rich and full of insight, but also disparate, complex, abstract and difficult for many people to understand. EMC hopes to provide the tools and platforms to create highly interactive, accessible analysis and visualizations.
OUTCOME
The Phenology project[4] brings previously separate data sets together to begin the process of studying relationships between climate change, phenology, and bird migration. This data is collected primarily by citizen scientists through different organizations such as Earthwatch, eBird[3], the Hawk Migration Association of North America, and the USA National Phenology Network.
However on the Whenology website, although the most of the data is infographic with annotation, they are mainly for presentation and educational aim. The impact and success of this project can be measured from: (1) Data standardization for easy implementation and tracking. (2) Data reusability. Users can find the data according to their needs, for example, what kinds of data and how deep is the data are needed. This project can be scaled to (1) be a user-friendly and joyful tool for users to get the data and present the data. (2) recruit more citizen science organization.
Reference:
[1] Earthwatch Institute: http://earthwatch.org/
[2] Schoodic Institute: http://www.schoodicinstitute.org/
[3] eBird: http://www.schoodicinstitute.org/
[4] WHENOLOGY: http://www.emc.com/microsites/whenology/index.htm
