CONFERENCE ANNOUNCEMENT
The Conference on Scientific and Technical Data Exchange and Integration
Sponsored by U.S. National Committee for CODATA
National Research Council
December 15-17, 1997
Natcher Conference Center
National Institutes of Health
Bethesda, MD
The exchange of scientific and technical (S&T) data among different
computing environments and across diverse scientific and engineering
disciplines presents major problems that hinder full exploitation of
computer-based modeling, the Internet, modern scientific databases, and
new computer technology. The U.S. National Committee for CODATA is
sponsoring the first major interdisciplinary conference on this subject
on December 15-17, 1997, in Bethesda, MD. The conference has three main
purposes:
- To identify areas, with special emphasis on interdisciplinary
needs, in which data exchange and integration are important;
- To highlight major S&T data exchange and integration efforts
already underway or in planning; and
- To foster serious and significant cooperation in these kinds of
activities among scientific and engineering disciplines, and
governmental and non-governmental organizations.
Extended Call for Papers
The conference will consist of four types of sessions: plenary invited
lectures; contributed papers (which will be presented as posters);
demonstrations; and small discussion sections. Case studies are
particularly encouraged. Contributed papers and demonstrations are
invited on the following topics:
Discipline-specific data exchange activities and requirements
Interdisciplinary data exchange activities and requirements
Federally supported data exchange programs
Definitions of scientific and technical metadata issues
The computer science of data exchange and integration
The impact of the Internet and the World Wide Web on S&T data
exchange and integration
Future needs for data exchange and integration for scientific and
technical data
The contributed papers and demonstrations will play a major role in the
conference by identifying existing activities and approaches that will
provide direction and insight for further activities. All contributed
papers will be considered for publication in the Conference proceedings,
which will be published on the Internet soon after the Conference. A
200
word (maximum) abstract should be submitted (preferably by e-mail) by
August 1, 1997 (new extended date) to:
Paul F. Uhlir
Director, U.S. National Committee for CODATA
National Research Council
2101 Constitution Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20418
(202) 334-1684 (fax)
(202) 334-2421 (tel.)
codataco at nas.edu
For further information, contact the U.S. National Committee for CODATA
as provided above, or John Rumble, Conference Program Chair, National
Institute of Standards and Technology, Building 820, Room 113,
Gaithersburg, MD 20899, e-mail john.rumble at nist.gov, telephone (301)
975-2200.
Notification of acceptance will be given by August 15, 1997.
Conference Sponsors
Defense Technical Information Center
Department of Energy
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
National Institutes of Health
National Institute of Standards and Technology
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
National Science Foundation
[Additional sponsors to be added]
Preliminary Program
Monday, December 15, 1997
8:40 Welcome
Chair, U.S. National Committee for CODATA
8:45 Conference Introduction
William Wulf, National Academy of Engineering (Accepted)
Plenary Session 1 - The Importance of Scientific Data Sharing
9:00 Sharing scientific data - A key to progress in research and
development
Rita Colwell, University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute (Accepted)
9:30 Getting more from our research investment - Cross-discipline
research
and information sharing
Neal Lane, National Science Foundation (Accepted)
10:00 Data exchange and integration - Fundamental issues
John Rumble, National Institute of Standards and Technology (Accepted)
10:30 Coffee
10:50 Industry using information - Why industry shares scientific and
technical data, and how
Robert Kiggans, PDES, Inc. (Accepted)
11:20 The need for data sharing in global change research
Robert Corell, National Science Foundation (Accepted)
11:50 Lunch
Demonstrations and Poster Presentations (from 11:45 am on Monday until
5:00 pm on Tuesday)
Plenary Session 2 - Tearing Down the Walls: The Art and Science of Data
Exchange and Integration
3:00 Data exchange and integration - Approaches
Gio Wiederhold, Stanford University (Accepted)
3:30 Information modeling
Yuhwei Yang, Product Data Integration Technology (Accepted)
4:00 Resolving conceptual disagreements
4:30 The sociology of data exchange - Reaching consensus on data
exchange
tools
Bruce Wiersma, University of Maine at Orono (Accepted)
5:00 Making data easy to share
Ben Shneiderman, University of Maryland (Accepted)
5:30 Adjourn
Tuesday, December 16
Plenary Session 3: Challenges to Cooperation - Why data exchange must
succeed
9:00 Sharing scientific and technical data - Maximizing the potential of
the National Information Infrastructure
Senior Administration Official [to be determined]
9:45 Long-term ecological and environmental data - The challenge of
keeping and remembering
Susan Stafford, Oregon State University (Accepted)
10:10 Space observation data - Looking in and looking out
Jim Green, NASA (Accepted)
10:35 Coffee
11:00 Human health and global climate change
Paul Epstein, Harvard University (Accepted)
11:25 Geographic information systems - what everybody needs, and why
David Mark, University of Buffalo (Accepted)
11:50 Molecular and cellular bioinformatics - From molecules to
biological functionality
David Lipman, National Center for Biotechnology Information (Accepted)
12:15 Lunch
Break Out Sessions
1:15 Break out sessions - topics to be finalized later
2:45 Coffee
4:45 Conclusion of break out sessions
Plenary Session 3 - Challenges of Cooperation (cont.)
5:00 Sharing social science data
Roberta Miller, Consortium for International Earth Science Information
Network (Accepted)
5:30 Adjourn
Wednesday, December 17
Plenary Session 4 - How to Cooperate - Examples of Successful
Cross-Discipline Data Exchange and Integration
8:45 Geographic information systems
John Moeller, U.S. Geological Survey and Federal Geographic Data
Committee (Accepted)
9:05 ISO Standard for the exchange of product data
Howard Bloom, National Institute of Standards and Technology (Accepted)
9:25 World Data Centers
Ferris Webster, University of Delaware (Accepted)
9:45 To be determined
10:05 Coffee
Closing Plenary
10:30 Ideas from the Break-Out Sessions
Julian Humphries, Kansas State University (Accepted)
10:50 Next steps for the scientists
Robert Robbins, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center (Accepted)
11:20 Next steps for the research community
Official from the Office of Science and Technology Policy [TBD]
11:45 Final Remarks
Chair, U.S. National Committee for CODATA
Additional Background
By data exchange is meant several things: the transfer of large amounts
of data from one set of software to other software; extracting small
amounts of data from one or more data sources for specific use; and the
creation of a linked or integrated data system with multiple data
sources. Other possibilities exist. Data exchange has two major
components: the stream of bits and bytes
that actually represent the data items and fields, and the contextual
meaning of individual data items and fields.
S&T disciplines and applications have begun addressing data exchange
issues, but progress has been slow and difficult for a variety of
reasons. Scientists are often not accustomed to formal standards.
Discipline experts, even though they may be quite knowledgeable in
computation and database management, frequently lack expertise in
information modeling and exchange standards. Metadata are not well
defined, complicating the application of data across diverse scientific
areas. As a result, interdisciplinary data exchange has been difficult
to promote and rarely implemented.
Consider for a moment geographic information. Many applications need
such information: to locate physically the sources of samples, to
describe the range of a phenomenon, or to specify the location of an
event, among others. Today many geographic information systems serve
diverse communities of users, and several efforts to develop standards
for exchanging data among these systems have been proposed. Yet
progress
to develop such standards in other areas has been slow. Other types of
scientific data, such as biological nomenclature, chemical and
engineering material identification and temporal data, suffer the same
problem. Many uses for these data exist outside the scientific
disciplines that generate them, yet accepted methods for exchanging
these
data remain elusive.
In Finding the Forest in the Trees, The Challenge of Combining Diverse
Environmental Data, the U.S. National Committee for CODATA clearly
documented case studies in which data interfacing, defined in that
report
as the coordination, combination or integration of data for the purpose
of modeling, correlation, pattern analysis, hypotheses testing, and
field
investigation at various scales, was necessary to achieve full value of
research investment. Data interfacing is founded upon the standards and
protocols agreed to by different scientific disciplines to exchange
data.
Particular emphasis must be put on the role of metadata in this data
exchange.
About CODATA
The Committee on Data for Science and Technology (CODATA) is an
interdisciplinary committee organized under the International Council of
Scientific Unions (ICSU). CODATA is concerned with all types of
quantitative data resulting from experimental measurements or
observations in the physical, biological, geological, and astronomical
sciences. Particular emphasis is given to data management problems
common to different scientific disciplines and to data used outside the
field in which they were generated. The general objectives are the
improvement of the quality and accessibility of data, as well as the
methods by which data are acquired, managed, and analyzed; the
facilitation of international cooperation among those collecting,
organizing, and using data; and the promotion of an increased awareness
in the scientific and technical community of the importance of these
activities.
The U.S. National Committee for CODATA is organized by the National
Research Council to administer activities within the United States
related to CODATA. The Committee is funded by
several federal agencies. Over the past decade, the Committee has
completed several studies that have identified and analyzed issues
related to maximizing the availability and usability of scientific and
technical data. This national conference builds upon those studies and
is intended to spur further progress and cooperation in data exchange
and
integration.
Local Information
The Natcher Conference Center is located in the National Institutes of
Health complex in Bethesda, MD at 45 Center Drive. It is most easily
accessible by the Metro or by taxi. Parking facilities are limited.
A block of rooms has been reserved at the government rate at the
Bethesda
Hyatt Regency Hotel, 1 Bethesda Metro Center (on Wisconsin Avenue),
tel.
(301) 657-1234. The hotel is located by the Bethesda Metro stop on the
Red Line, one stop from the Natcher Conference Center.
Additional information about the Conference site, hotel accommodations,
and local travel will be provided to all registrants in advance of the
meeting.
Organizing Committee
Goetz Oertel (Chair), Association of Universities for Research in
Astronomy
Gerald Barton, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
James Beach, National Science Foundation
W. Murray Black, George Mason University
Rita Colwell, Maryland Biotechnology Institute
Ali Ghovanlou, Department of Energy
Sara Graves, University of Alabama at Huntsville
Micah Krichevsky, Bionomics International
David Lide, Jr., Chair, U.S. National Committee for CODATA, and
consultant
Kurt Molholm, Defense Technical Information Center
John Rumble, National Institute of Standards and Technology
James Thieman, National Aeronautics and Space Administration
Paul Uhlir, Director, U.S. National Committee for CODATA,
National Research Council
Program Committee
John Rumble (Chair), National Institute of Standards and Technology
Martin Hardwick, STEP Tools, Inc.
Julian Humphries, University of Kansas
Paul Kanciruk, Oak Ridge National Laboratory
David Mark, National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis
Crystal Newton, Materials Sciences Corporation
Robert Robbins, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center
Gio Wiederhold, Stanford University
Conference Registration
Space is limited and advance registration is required. To register,
please complete
the form (below), detach, and mail, enclosing a non-refundable
registration fee.
Registration fee:
Before November 15, 1997 $150.00
After November 15, 1997 $200.00
Students $ 30.00
Please send only one registration per form. For other participants,
reproduce the form prior to completing it. Only checks, money orders, or
purchase orders can be accepted. We regret that we cannot take
reservations by email and that we cannot accept credit cards.
If you have special dietary or physical needs, please notify us in
writing
when registering.
Need more information? Call: (202) 334-2421, or Email: CODATACO at NAS.EDU
(Cut here)
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and
Integration
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National Research Council, Room 315
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Washington, DC 20418
