ET-IM-8 (2021-Aug-03) Meeting notes

1

Peng

what does information mean to you for your discipline and what you do?

Tim: Ocean perspective: Products derived from data that lead to a greater understanding of an entity (UN 2020). Examples: (i) the interpretation of a range of data from an array of conductivity sensors across the Arctic Ocean that informs us about that ocean’s salinity range; or (ii) the narrative text of a report on harmful algal blooms that informs the reader on the timing of these blooms. Peng: --> Scientific information?

William: Data-Information-Knowledge-Wisdom. It defines Information as "Data plus context", and distinguishes information from data as being "organised, structured, categorised, useful, condensed, calculated".  Examples: i) apply a pattern categorisation approach to daily/monthly rainfall totals to define statistics and patterns using, for instance, compositing or empirical orthogonal function (EOF) analysis. ii) Others: analyses, reports, procedural manuals, forecasts and warnings, seasonal predictions and climate change projections, process documentation, computer code, inventories, algorithms.

2

Peng

Definition of Data

Definition of Information

• William: information also includes

  • data+analysis+manual+guid+compute code +

  • model derived products

  • computer code

  • for management: should include quality control and life cycle

  • manual is regulatory material

  • guidance and policy about cloud technology should be considered too

  • BoM has a cloud policy which could be helpful to refer to

• Peng:

  • Res.42 derived products are part of data, not information.

  • provide high level of definition and examples to distinguish them

  • what is not included here (such as financial data)

  • Question: Roles and responsibilities included in this guidance?

    • (William) appendix could work

    • (Axel) should be mentioned

• Axel

  • Think about the abstraction level

  • to restructure data-information and then go to data/information management

  • cloud: specific, related to data security

  • information customer (information providers consider who will use the data)

  • Can provide examples of warming reports and bulletins

• Hassan

  • process of both data and information is the same

  • definition of data and information are different, but the data/information management is of the same

  • the current version is ok

  • guidance is for WMO community and support all WMO Programms

  • to develop standards and best practice from the guidance

  • now the draft is good to share with other teams who may add more to the definitions

• Tim

  • do we need to add information limit for management? (Team agrees)

3

William

Information Management

• (Axel) Scope should be flexible

• (Tim) DMP/SLA works well for large data sources. Do we need data manage plan for individual cruise or at hoc measurements taken by an individual during the cruise?

• (Hassan) prototype for management plan can be used for all information creation

• (William/Peng) data management plan can be set at the project level

• (William) to make people to think about the cost of data maintenance

• (Axel) data management plan depends on its application