Strengthening a World's Resilience Begins with Robust Data Foundation

In an era of unprecedented digital advancements, the world is witnessing exciting innovations in data collection, analysis, and visualization. Initiatives such as the National Science Foundation's Ocean Observatories Initiative and the Global Earth Observation System of Systems are at the forefront of this technological revolution.

Climate science, resilience studies, and ecology, in partnership with the private sector, are working together to solve environmental challenges. The private sector, with its innovative spirit, is eager to create and share knowledge that can help tackle these issues.

Communities, especially those vulnerable to natural and man-made disasters, need digital information technologies to prepare for, operate during, and recover from such calamities. These technologies must also be resilient, capable of withstanding the challenges posed by rapidly changing environmental conditions.

A relatively new medium, the "story map," offers a compelling solution to tell specific and engaging stories, integrating photos, videos, and sounds within a digital map. This tool can empower communities by providing them with the means to share their experiences and raise awareness about critical issues.

Recently, Dr. Dawn J. Wright, an expert in geospatial science and resilience, proposed three principles for making digital data and information resilient. These principles emphasize openness, accessibility, and adaptability of digital data and information to enhance resilience.

Open Data Sharing – Making data openly available to communities and stakeholders to ensure widespread access and collaboration.
Ensuring Data Longevity and Integrity – Preserving data quality and authenticity over time to maintain trust and usefulness.
Flexible and Adaptive Information Systems – Designing data infrastructures that can evolve with changing technologies and environmental contexts.

These principles are crucial for providing transparent, reliable, and adaptable information critical for informed decision-making, disaster preparedness, and sustainable resource management. Open sharing fosters collaboration; integrity ensures the data remains trustworthy; adaptability allows systems to remain relevant under shifting conditions such as climate change, urbanization, or resource stresses.

Organizations like the Climate Data Initiative and the new Research Data Alliance are encouraging innovators from the private sector and the general public to share data on climate change risks and impacts. Partnerships between these entities and governments are most successful when based on a holistic strategy addressing specific community needs.

NOAA has formed cooperative research and development agreements with major tech companies like Amazon, Microsoft, Google, IBM, and the Open Commons Consortium, further demonstrating the importance of public-private partnerships in addressing global change challenges.

Technology plays a pivotal role in cultivating resilience, particularly in the context of global change. From monitoring natural disasters to mapping insurance zones, tracking health epidemics, finding drinking water, alerting to weather changes, determining landscape vulnerability, monitoring air quality, and identifying solar panel installation positions, digital technologies are not just for data collection but are also helping communities in practical ways.

The Smithsonian Institution has even created a story map depicting human influence on the planet and innovations promoting sustainability. Decades of studies in psychology have shown that storytelling affects the human mind and influences attitudes, fears, hopes, and values, making it a valuable tool for transmitting academic knowledge into mainstream society and empowering action.

This article is a Voices piece published in collaboration with the academic journal Elementa, discussing the role of technology in fostering resilience in the face of global change. The search results do not directly provide Dr. Wright’s three principles for making digital data and information resilient or how these help communities respond to global change challenges. For more specific or updated details from Dr. Wright’s works, a direct source or publication by her would be needed.