1. Legal Interoperability of Scientific Data: Why We Need It Now!
Dr. Robert S. Chen Director and Senior Research Scientist CIESIN, The Earth Institute
Manager, NASA Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC) Co-chair, RDA/CODATA Legal Interoperability Interest Group Co-chair, GEO Data Sharing Working Group

2. The Challenge: Massive Planetary Change
From :
Population more than doubled
Economy grew seven-fold
Food consumption tripled
Water use tripled
Fossil fuels increased four-fold

3. No areas of the world are safe from disaster
Climate Sensitive:
Drought
Floods
Severe storms
Cyclones/hurricanes
Landslides
Wildfires
Heat waves
Cold waves
Geophysical:
Earthquakes
Volcanoes
Tsunamis
Human:
Wars/conflict
Accidents
Epidemics …
The Casita slide

4. Climate Change is Already Upon Us!
Climate Change and Observed Impacts as documented by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fifth Assessment

5. The Need: Generate and Access Data and Knowledge for Sustainable Development
Link monitoring and scientific networks
Rescue and integrate important data
Utilize new sources and sensors
Harness the Internet and the crowd
GPM
2014

6. The Challenge: Streamline data processing and integration for ever larger & more complex data
GEOSS Architecture Implementation Pilot (AIP)
Version: Final Draft
Document prepared for the AIP-3 Call for Participation

7. Core Principles for Sharing Data
Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Article 27: “(1) Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits.”
ICSU Principle of Universality of Science
Statute 5: “This principle embodies freedom of movement, association, expression and communication for scientists, as well as equitable access to data, information and research materials.”

8. Data Sharing and Legal Interoperability for Earth Observations: The Case of GEO
Group on Earth Observations: a voluntary intergovernmental organization established in 2005, with >100 member governments and >100 participating organizations
1, GEOSS is a global distributed system, including in-situ, air-born space-based systems. GEOSS will be a “system of systems” with components consisting of existing and future Earth observation systems across the processing cycle from primary observation to information production, supplementing but not supplanting their own mandates and governance arrangements.
2, The vision for GEOSS is to realize a future wherein decisions and actions for the benefit of humankind are informed by coordinated, comprehensive and sustained Earth observations and information.
3, The implementation of GEOSS will seek to ensure effective consultation and cooperation with the UN system and other international and national agencies sponsoring or cosponsoring the major component global observing systems on which GEOSS will be built. WMO as a participating organization of GEO, has worked alongside GEO to expand global observations for a better understanding of global environmental trends.

9. New GEO Data Sharing Principles
"Data, metadata and products will be shared as Open Data by default, by making them available as part of the GEOSS Data Collection of Open Resources for Everyone (Data-CORE) without charge or restrictions on reuse, subject to the conditions of registration and attribution when the data are reused;
“Where international instruments, national policies or legislation preclude the sharing of data as Open Data, data should be made available with minimal restrictions on use and at no more than the cost of reproduction and distribution; and
“All shared data, products and metadata will be made available with minimum time delay.”
Developed by the GEO Data Sharing Working Group (DSWG) in
Adopted by GEO as part of the GEO Strategic Plan : Implementing GEOSS in November 2015 ( p. 11)
Data sharing

10. GEO Approach to Legal Interoperability
DSWG white paper on “Legal Options for the Exchange of Data through the GEOSS Data-CORE” accepted by GEO Plenary in and 2014
Insight on what legal interoperability of data means
Promotes the use of legislative waivers of rights and the placing of data and information produced by government entities in the public domain
Provides examples of standard waivers (e.g. PDM, CC0, PDDL, CC BY 4.0) or characteristics of common-use licenses that meet GEOSS Data- CORE conditions of access.
GEO Task GD-01 on DSP Implementation
Developing implementation guidelines for the new DSPs
Recommends using only standard instruments to help assure legal interoperability of data

11. Data Sharing and Legal Interoperability for Earth Observations: The Case for the SDGs
The UN General Assembly Adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development in Sept. 2015
The 2030 Agenda includes 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), aka the Global Goals for Sustainable Development, and 169 targets
229 indicators have been identified and provisionally accepted by the UN Statistics Commission in March 2016

12. Two SDGs That Address Data Access
Goal 16: Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels
Target 16.10: Ensure public access to information and protect fundamental freedoms, in accordance with national legislation and international agreements.
Goal 17: Revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development
Data, monitoring and accountability
Target 17.18: By 2020, enhance capacity-building support to developing countries, including for least developed countries and small island developing States, to increase significantly the availability of high-quality, timely and reliable data disaggregated by income, gender, age, race, ethnicity, migratory status, disability, geographic location and other characteristics relevant in national contexts.

13. UN Independent Expert Advisory Group on the Data Revolution for Sustainable Development (2014)
Identified 9 key principles, including:
Data transparency and openness
“All data on public matters and/or funded by public funds, including those data produced by the private sector, should be made public and “open by default”, with narrow exemptions for genuine security or privacy concerns. It needs to be both technically open (i.e., available in a machine-readable standard format so that it can be retrieved and meaningfully processed by a computer application) and legally open (i.e., explicitly licensed in a way that permits commercial and non-commercial use and re-use without restrictions).

14. Current Initiatives
Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data (GPSDD)
Principles and Protocols Group
Initial assessment conducted of relevant open access principles in the development community
UN World Data Forum (15-18 January 2017 in Cape Town)
Likely to follow up on data integration/access issues including data and human rights
Opportunity to highlight the need to clarify data rights and promote legal interoperability in the broad development community
RDA/CODATA Legal Interoperability Interest Group
New principles and guidelines for legal interoperability of scientific data to be considered for RDA approval later this week
Potential to assess how these principles and guidelines would apply to sustainable development data, working with GPSDD or others

15. The Clock is Ticking on 2030!
“We resolve, between now and 2030, to end poverty and hunger everywhere; to combat inequalities within and among countries; to build peaceful, just and inclusive societies; to protect human rights and promote gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls; and to ensure the lasting protection of the planet and its natural resources. We resolve also to create conditions for sustainable, inclusive and sustained economic growth, shared prosperity and decent work for all, taking into account different levels of national development and capacities. “The spread of information and communications technology and global interconnectedness has great potential to accelerate human progress, to bridge the digital divide and to develop knowledge societies, as does scientific and technological innovation across areas as diverse as medicine and energy.”