Rob E Jennings

The Digital Antarctica project is an initiative under the Australian Antarctic Program Partnership that aims to increase the FAIRness of the collaborating partners, with a specific focus on interoperability. The initiative was based on recommendations coming out of the Clarke review of the Australian Antarctic Science Program, which called for a federated data architecture to facilitate a world-class centre for Antarctic data analytics. The Australian Antarctic Program Partnership consists of predominantly science-focussed organisations performing research across the Antarctic and Southern Ocean regions. Each organisation collects and serves data to meet the unique focus and purpose of the organisation and its data users. Because of the disparate nature of the organisations and their needs, there is no definitive and simple way to find and integrate Australian Antarctic data. Any researcher or policy maker looking for Australian Antarctic data must first know where to look. The Digital Antarctica project is addressing this by: working with the partnership organisations to define agreed standards of data storage, data delivery, and interoperable services; assisting organisations in implementing those standards; and constructing a prototype to demonstrate how those services and standards can be used to create a federated data model to help find, access, and integrate Australian Antarctic research data. This presentation will delve into what makes Digital Antarctica unique. It will also cover how we have addressed the challenges which arise from working closely with stakeholders from a small but diverse group of partner organisations, including: agreement on various aspects of the initiative (for example, terms, scope, goals, and standards); engaging with organisations of varying sizes; and finding approaches that suit a wide range of data levels, data types and breadth of data offerings.