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*La version francais suite*

There are currently few forums for research funders engaged in the open research and data management space to discuss their unique challenges, perspectives and opportunities. Creating a forum for research funders to initiate or further data-related discussions could result in lasting benefits for the research community (increased coordination, standardization and support) and the funders themselves in terms of avoiding duplication of efforts and building on existing expertise and resources.

The Internet now connects data, compute resources and software from globally distributed resources in real time. Where on planet Earth these resources are geographically located is irrelevant, but to enable online access to them, there is a rising need for programmatic access to both data, and to software to process data across institutional, domain and national boundaries. This requires the development of standardized machine-to-machine interfaces that can loosely couple data and software through agreed formats, interfaces, vocabularies and ontologies, preferably across multiple domains. The complexity of these online infrastructures require that they are built by much wider communities, through effective cooperation and governance, to enable new and innovative forms of interdisciplinary science from globally accessible data stores. 

In a field where the amount and the data sources increase exponentially, it becomes critical to find efficient solutions at a community level to address problems such as storage, indexing, metadata, sharing, or analysis. The global objectives of this Interest Group will be to explore and discuss the challenges for management, efficient analysis and dissemination of large and diverse datasets generated by the weather, climate and air quality communities.

Coordination group of the RDA/US 2016 Data Share Fellows.

The Array Database Assessment WG is inspecting the emerging technology of Array Databases to provide support for technologists and decision makers considering Big Data services in academic and industrial environments (such as in large-scale data centers) by establishing best-practice guidelines on how to optimally serve multi-dimensional gridded Big Data through Array Databases. This will be accomplished through a neutral, thorough hands-on evaluation assessing available Array Database systems and comparable technology

• based on relevant standards, such as the NIST Big Data Reference Architecture, ISO “Array SQL”, and OGC Web Coverage Processing Service (WCPS) for the geo domain;
• comparing technical criteria like functionality, thereby eliciting the state of the art;
• establishing and running a combination of domain-driven and domain-neutral benchmarks that will be run on each platform;
• as well as real-life, publicly accessible deployments at scale.

The result, consisting of the ADA:WG report together with the open-source benchmarking software and the services established, will establish a hitherto non-existing overview on the state of the art and best use of Array Databases in science, engineering, and beyond.