Emerging Revolutions: Challenges and Opportunities Chair: Lorenzo Bigagli, National Research Council, Italy Rapporteur: Bob Chen, CIESIN, Columbia University Participants: Senay Habtezion, START Gabor Remetey, GSDI/HUNAGI Steve Browdy, IEEE Hyunrok Lee, APEC Climate Center Eugene Yu, George Mason University Bente Lilja Bye, BLB Lucia Lovison

BYTE Big Data Roadmap and Cross-Disciplinary Community for Addressing Societal Externalities – March 2014-Feb 2017; 11 partners, 10 countries – Trifecta of Innovation Opportunity – Big Data, Open Data, and Open Access Big Data Concerns: Externalities – Economic, Legal, Social/Ethical, Political Case studies – Environment, Energy, Utilities/Smart Cities, Cultural Data, Health, Crisis Informatics, Transport Outcomes – Big Data vision for Europe for 2020 – Research & Policy roadmaps – Charter for Big Data community and sustainability plan GEO IDIB as case study Focus Group meeting, April 13, Vienna

Questions What are the potential values, not only to future GEOSS, but also to anyone who might benefit, of exploiting the data super nova in the environment sector? How should the data super nova (including the IoT and the Internet of People) be utilized and integrated in the next GEOSS? What e-infrastructure is needed to facilitate the full exploitation of big environmental data in the next GEOSS? What hindering factors would prevent from getting the most out of the data super nova to maximize societal benefits in the next GEOSS? What facilitating factors would help in getting the most of the data super nova to maximize societal benefits in the next GEOSS? What do you think stands behind these factors?

Discussion Not clear what is so new about big data that changes what GEOSS is doing…has already been doing big data for >decade GEOSS is facilitating access to lots of data – value of GEOSS, not value to GEOSS Greater variety of data, e.g., crowdsourced, etc. has implications for GEOSS Both GEOSS and other sources of big data facing similar issues in making data more relevant to decision making – the benefits also come with risks Use of big data in urban settings; e.g., implications of using cellphone data for crowd control. Can private sector orgs participate in GEO? As part of national member only?

Social Media & Networking Data GEOSS considering social networking as source of data? – Examples: twitter indications of quake extent – Cell phone data – impact of power outages? – New technologies, e.g., health monitoring Members don’t currently “own” social media data – What about value added processed data based on social media? How do you make data authoritative? Need to apply methods to transform data into authoritative source, e.g., W3C Validation and verification of data is up to members, not GEO Examples: – Eye on Earth app…collecting data for a specific application – GEO-GLAM—information for decision making; member states take responsibility for the information development and validation GEO and GEOSS could serve as forum for airing issues and problems (complementary to other efforts?)

Summary Responses to Questions 1)GEOSS has always been about big data in environment sector! 2)IoT and IoP—and the “Internet of Location”—are already becoming part of GEOSS. 3)GEOSS needs to facilitate new data integration and to address policies, privacy etc.: e.g., anonymization, processes to control use, legal interoperability, quality labeling/trust processes. 4)E-infrastructure—needed to support open access, legal interoperability, education/changing data culture. 5)Benefits of using data to support SBAs inevitably comes with risks of potential misuse of data; GEO has to be supportive and follow member policies.