Matthew M King, Brendan Billingsley, Pip Bircher, Ruth Duerr and Peter L. Pulsifer

The Mapping the Polar Data Ecosystem (MPDE) project aims to better document and understand the polar components of the global information ecosystem in order to target gaps in information resources. Its purpose is also to guide the ongoing development of the increasingly interconnected global information system in support of governance, research, livelihoods and myriad other applications. Under the guidance of the Polar Data Discovery Enhancement Research (POLDER) Working Group and related bodies, the Geomatics and Cartographic Research Centre at Carleton University has used the Nunaliit software framework to develop documentation tools for the MPDE project. Nunaliit is used to display and collect data in a customizable multimedia atlas and visualization application. The primary focus of this atlas iteration was to compile existing data and provide tools for further documenting polar data catalogs into the MPDE atlas, as well as to link the activity and relationships between and among catalogs. The Nunaliit MPDE atlas uses schemas, which act as templates for the data documents in the atlas, and modules, which dictate how the atlas narrative and visualizations are displayed. A schema for the documenting catalogs was created, based on the columns from tabular data from an existing survey. A custom module was also built to display the data in a table form, alongside a map module, which provides an alternate spatial view of the data. We discuss the interoperability challenges resolved when building the MPDE atlas (e.g. importing and reformatting tabular data, geocoding etc.). The presentation concludes with an overview of next steps, including the development of a network visualization graph and publication of Linked Open Data.