The Community for Data Integration is a community of practice whose purpose is to advance the U.S. Geological Survey’s data integration capabilities. In fiscal year 2022, the Community for Data Integration held 11 monthly forums, facilitated 20 collaboration areas, and supported 13 projects. The activities supported the broad U.S. Geological Survey priority of producing building blocks for doing integrated predictive science. Specifically, the activities supported tools and methods for FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) data and fire science and coastal resilience and protection. Through these efforts, community members were informed of new and emerging technologies and data topics that helped them accomplish their professional responsibilities.
At the end of fiscal year (FY) 2022, the CDI had 2,437 members. Members included both USGS employees and USGS contractors, as well as members from academia, non-profits, commercial companies, and other state, federal, and international organizations. The roles that members serve in their organizations include data managers, research scientists, software developers, managers, data scientists, and other practitioners. In 2022, CDI migrated from the Mailman listserv system for email communications to GovDelivery.
New CDI Collaboration Areas in FY22
Cryosphere
The USGS Cryosphere Community of Practice (Cryo CoP) serves as a community space to share, learn, collaborate on, and discuss cryosphere related research. The cryosphere is the collective portions of the Earth’s surface where water is in its frozen state – snow cover, ice sheets and shelves, freshwater ice, sea ice, icebergs, permafrost, and ground ice. The USGS cryosphere research community conducts work on many of these topics. Ongoing USGS cryosphere research combined with the recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate (SROCC) (IPCC, 2019) highlights the importance of a changing cryosphere in the context of climate change.
Markdown LaTeX
The Markdown LaTeX collaboration area is dedicated to exploring and making more accessible Markdown and LaTeX capabilities in the USGS. Markdown and LaTeX are two ways to precisely define formatting using plain text. Because of their basis in plain text, code-driven and reproducible workflows may use them to create rich products. Markdown is commonly used to format information in code repositories such as code.usgs.gov, and LaTeX is commonly used by the scientific communities that employ many equations in their manuscripts. The group holds quarterly calls for a mix of demonstrations, Q&A, and resource sharing.
Statistics
The Statistics Community of Practice is dedicated to sharing resources about statistics in Earth sciences. Statistics-based questions arise frequently from CDI members. This community provides a space to asking and answering questions, sharing announcements about upcoming statistics trainings, and posting resources related to statistical methods. Examples of courses and topics shared are Statistical methods for environmental data analysis, and Staistical techniques for trend and load estimation.
See all Collaboration Areas.
Go back to CDI 2022 Activities.
