Background

The Polar Environment Data Science Center (PEDSC) has been newly launched in 2017 as one of the centers belonging to the Joint Support-Center for Data Science Research (DS) of the Research Organization of Information and Systems (ROIS).

The ROIS has been established in 2004 as an Inter-university Research Institute Corporation, consisting of four national institutes (the National Institute of Polar Research (NIPR), the National Institute of Informatics (NII), the Institute of Statistical Mathematics (ISM) and the National Institute of Genetics (NIG)). The third term of the ROIS has started since 2016. The DS has been established in 2016 at the start of the third term as a flagship platform of the ROIS, whose purpose is to strengthen the function of the ROIS to promote the support activities for universities and other external communities.

Main purpose of the DS is to support the activities for the data sharing, data analysis, and data scientist human resource development in universities and other external communities, responding to the needs of the times for the Open science and Data centric science.

The PEDSC is a center of the DS to support the data activities associated with polar science. Planning phase for the PEDSC started in 2015, and a preparatory office was made in the NIPR in 2016. After the detailed planning for the schedule and structure of the PEDSC in the preparatory office, the PEDSC has been formally launched in 2017. The PEDSC has a close relationship with the scientific observation and research activities of the NIPR. The main purpose of the PEDSC is to strengthen and further promote the opening and sharing of the polar science data for further broader communities, closely collaborating with the polar science research community leaded by the NIPR.

Goals

The purpose of the Polar Environment Data Science Center (PEDSC) is to promote the opening and sharing of the scientific data, originally obtained by the scientific observation and research activities in the Antarctic and Arctic regions by the polar science research community in various fields leaded by the National Institute of Polar Research (NIPR). Its purpose is to strengthen the collaboration with universities and other external communities, and to support the creation of further scientific outputs and further advancement of the importance of the polar science research. Internationally, the PEDSC is also expected to play a key role of the national data center for polar science in Japan.
Goals of the PEDSC are to play a central role of the data activities in the polar science research in Japan, to create a new data centric polar science, and to contribute the advances of the global environmental studies.