Our activity

Data treated by the PEDSC

Data treated by the Polar Environment Data Science Center (PEDSC) are the ones obtained by the scientific research observations and activities in the Antarctic and arctic regions.
Various observations and research activities are carried out in both polar regions by the research scientists collaborating with the National Institute of Polar Research (NIPR) in various research fields, including upper atmospheric sciences, meteorology, marine science, glaciology, geoscience, and bioscience, etc., and various data are obtained in various forms, e.g., digital data in various recording media, or samples stored in various containers, etc. Those data are processed and analyzed afterward to be converted to the secondary physically meaningful data, and then to be used for obtaining scientific results.
In order to obtain the reliable scientific results, reliability of the data should be ensured. For that purpose, it is required that the data should be securely stored, not be lost, not be degraded, not be falsified, and be reusable for everyone to obtain the same results.
On the other hand, it is also required for doing a global scale study, such as the global environmental change, to use various data in various research fields at the same time to invent new findings. In such a case, information on the location and attribute of those various data (metadata) should be treated in a unified manner.
And also, it could be possible that some data in some research filed are applied to the other unrelated research field to get unpredictable new findings and new values. For such a case, openness and accessibility of the data should be important.
Task of the PEDSC is to support such activities for processing, analyzing, archiving, sharing, and opening the polar science data to promote further collaboration with external communities.

Previous data activities and current status

Japanese Antarctic observation has started in 1957 when Syowa Station had been established in Antarctica. In the history of about 60 years since that time, various data have been stored and various databases have been made in each research field.
Those data activities have been done by each data manager or data managing team in each research field, and depend on the resources of human, hardware, and software of each team, resulting in a variation of the current status of the data processing, database creation, and data opening for each observation data.
It is also a current problem that a unified database covering all the research fields of polar science has not yet been constructed, and it is difficult to do a cross-disciplinary search, use, and access to the data.
On the other hand, some database systems to treat various data in various research fields, such as “Science Database”, “Arctic Data archive System (ADS)”, and “Inter-university Upper atmosphere Global Observation NETwork (IUGONET)”, have been developed so far. Purpose and background of the development of each database system is different from each other, and a unified database system to search, visualize, and analyze all the data in all the research fields has not yet been constructed

Activity plan of the PEDSC

Based on the current status and scientific needs as mentioned above, the PEDSC will proceed the following items of activity plan during the third term of the 6 year period of the ROIS until 2021.

1. To construct a unified database system to cover all the data in all the research fields of polar science.
2. To make the existing database systems (Science Database, ADS, IUGONET) upgraded and interoperable with each other.
3. To promote archiving, opening, and sharing of the time-series digital data in each research field.
4. To promote archiving, opening, and sharing of the sample data in each research field.
5. To promote publication of the scientific data, using the Polar Data Journal of NIPR.
6. To promote collaboration with universities and other institutions in Japan and international communities.
7. To promote data science using the database and database system.

Activity Report

PEDSC activity report

PEDSC activity report(2017-2021)