Canada needs an Arctic data strategy to achieve its northern ambitions

National Observer

2 days ago

Mark Carney's Liberal government campaigned on an ambitious agenda for Canada's Arctic future. While Canada contains the second-largest swath of the Arctic in the world (40 per cent of our land mass, and 70 per cent of our coastline), our nation lags far behind others on almost every measure of built infrastructure, research investment, health outcomes and military readiness.
The prime minister is hoping to change this, and has already announced billions in spending on everything from housing to new and upgraded ports, roads and runways, as well as support for mineral extraction and climate change research. However, when it comes to the data strategy needed to tie all these investments together, Ottawa's silence has been deafening.
Critical knowledge about the Arctic continues to be siloed, disrupting what should be a functional and collaborative ecosystem model for sharing data and research. Despite decades of research on everything from ice conditions to wildlife genomics and archaeological sites, vital data remains scattered across hundreds of disconnected repositories. The need to unify this information and make it accessible is key to fully understanding and responding to the rapid pace of change in the Arctic.
On July 8, the Arctic Research Foundation (ARF), the Canadian Polar Data Consortium (CPDC), Red River College and Digital Governance Council released a Technical Report on Arctic Data Interoperability. It outlines simple steps, using a real-world case study, to increase the effectiveness of research data by making disparate databases interoperable. And while this is a significant step toward unifying this data, the road to full implementation is a long one that will require strategic and ongoing support from the federal government.
The data held in each individual database is useful, but none hosts enough cross-disciplinary information to provide a clear, holistic picture of the Arctic. Even narrowly targeted research, such as Beluga migration in the Husky Lakes or algae blooms in the Chukchi Sea, benefits from researchers having access to related information from different sources across both time and geographic regions.
But the current approach of keeping information in silos makes it difficult for researchers to make the crucial connections. What we need is a fulsome and dynamic data and research ecosystem.
Our report presents a method for directly addressing this problem and building a more holistic picture of the Arctic by using a central repository to search multiple databases simultaneously. The method is called Federated Metadata Search and unifies metadata — data that describes other data, providing information such as precise sample location or type of water analysis conducted — into a central platform.
More data is key to fully understanding and responding to the rapid pace of change in the Arctic, write Tom Henheffer, Keith Jansa and Shannon McAllister
The central resource utilized in the case study is the Polar Data Search (PDS) platform developed by the World Data System-International Technology Office and based on the Dutch 'polder model,' which emphasizes collaboration and consensus-building. The report details how students at Red River College and researchers at CPDC adapted ARF's Arctic Research Database — a free, pan-Arctic repository for primary research data — into PDS's new, more connected ecosystem.
The purpose of the report is to illustrate a real-world example of adaptation, providing a roadmap for other organizations to achieve metadata interoperability, with the goal of facilitating large-scale, cross-disciplinary research. While this may come across as incredibly technical to some, it represents an opportunity for Canada to become a global leader in a critical facet of Arctic research.
If Canada wants plans for large investments in Arctic infrastructure and research to be effective, it must do the work to ensure the data generated by these ventures is accessible and interoperable.
The release of this report is only one small step. Much more work is required to properly invest in Arctic science, to standardize and implement those standards in Arctic data, and to facilitate broad adoption of federated metadata practices.
This process is difficult, made more so by the same lack of investment in other fields of Arctic study. For example, the technical report was written on a volunteer basis in the spare time of the researchers and non-profit staff who authored it.
Even the Arctic Research Database used in the case study was built on a shoestring budget with private funds from ARF, a small grant from Mitacs, and the creativity of innovative and dedicated students at Red River College
The technological innovation detailed in the paper and the publication of the paper itself are a testament to what creativity and elbow grease can accomplish when a consortium of motivated researchers works toward a common purpose.
The pieces are in place. Now, for the initiative to achieve widespread adoption and for interoperability to grow sufficiently for Canada to truly harness the power of big data, the federal government will need to develop and fund a robust Arctic research data strategy.