Activity Report from International Strategic Advisor
Yubao QIU (qiuyb@aircas.ac.cn)

Abstract:
The visit to ROIS-DS and its PEDSC (Polar Environment Data Science Center) ended after days ofcommunication with the employees, scientists in NIPR, and its data infrastructure, activities, and relevant projects
in NIPR. It is a full experience to understand the last development of its operations and the strategy for the
research organization, project coordination, and data activities. All these findings are from the involvement in the
DSWS-2023 and the communication with our colleagues coordinated by Dr. Masaki Kanao (PEDSC), and also
based on a long-term contact with Prof. Hiroyuki Enomoto (NIPR) about the GEO and its cold regions initiative.
The report includes 1) science activities and exchange, with a focus on the polar Data and GEO services in thedata era, and the strategy for the datasets mapping with variables; 2) Exchange on the international engagement of
NIPR, the ARC, and its Data strategy; 3) suggestions on the international activities.
Overall, the development trend and its structure of the ROIS-DS, and the Polar Data have been in goodcondition, and aligned with the international development trend, with the most important way of the Earth Poles,
as the common concern of different agendas in Japan, and also in the international bodies, the integration of thedata is necessary for the whole country development, a good example is the ARC project almost include all theefforts by the public money or the international strategy of Japan. The frequent engagements are critical for thenear-Arctic countries, like Japan, Korea, China, and Asia Countries. Another important way could be thedevelopment in Asia Oceania regions to engage the GEO, WDS, and CODATA as the platform for the collected
efforts, and engaged in the global development.

1. General Activities in Japan visiting
1.1 Keynote and Session 7 in DSWS-2023
GEO CRI Talk: I was very horned to have a keynote talk in the opening session of the DSWS-2023, which
kept us again to have the GEO and its cold regions development, especially from the data and the essential
variables, and coordination development with the idea of the Earth three Poles, the Arctic, Antarctic and the
Tibetan Plateau and mountain cold area, where the EO plays key roles in the far away places, and caring about the
Earth environment in the fragile regions of cold area. As an international activity, now it is one of the GEO pilot
initiatives, with a focus on the EO data, and its value-added products and services to different challenges on thewarming Earth. This topic can be checked via www.geocri.org, addressing the aim of the last declarations of GEO
in Cape Town in Nov. 2023 - multilateral environmental agreements (MEA) - he Paris Climate Change Agreement,
the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, and the New
Urban Agenda.
The GEOCRI is now ongoing with the hat of GEO, mainly forcing on the EO applications, especially the
spaceborne observations, with the pilot services, and data development forwards of the streaming. NIPR is one ofthe players in this consortium, a co-lead position. About ten years ago, the 1st Polar data forum was held in Tokyo,
which was the initial time of the data issue at the global scale after the IPY exercise. The data issue was a big

concern in the past ten years for collecting or gathering data that distributed in the scientist's hands, while now thedata was enhanced again as the satellite EO is getting a fast development and open data policy in the world.
Session on GEO variables and data mapping for Cold Regions: Worked with the Asia Oceania players, thesession background is about 1) Global warming threatens the world's cold regions, while the essential variables of
the Group on Earth Observations (GEO) provide mapping schemes for the data in the current EO system. 2) GEO
Cold Regions Initiative (GEO CRI) calls for a gathering of the GEO variables for cold regions and mapping
existing or emergency data products for tackling the challenge of the warming world. 3) The topics could be
essential variables, GEO data system, and data application, and pilot services using the data stream, and cases
studies over cold regions by GEO. The main point discussed are,•

The session includes five talks on the variables of snow, glacier, and sea ice, both by in-situ measurement,
and satellite observations, and its value-added products. The session tackled the questions of the value
chain of EO data, especially the pilot service with the comprehensive service by multi-variables from thedatabase, it is the way forward to have the GEO Cold Regions connection with data from different
stakeholders and data holders.

•

The session includes five talks on the variables of snow, glacier, and sea ice, both by in-situ
measurement, and satellite observations, its value-added products and output from modeling.

•

The data management and data-based applications on the disaster and Arctic Shipping were reported toraise the impact-driven approaches of data value.

•

The audience asked questions about the value of the satellite in different time intervals about the sea ice,and proposed to consider the assimilation data products in the services, etc,.

•

Comments from co-chairs were about the essential variables for the societal benefits to extent the valueof data, like disaster mitigation, and shipping advisory.

The session was called from an international way, finally in the session, talks were about the snow and ice,and services (disaster, and shipping advisories), which brought a new chance the collaborate with GEO and WDSITO, or CODATA (if people could be engaged in the same group) for the pilot services as an international effort
under the framework of the inter-governmental organization, for example, the expand of the engagement of China,
and Japan, and Australia into a working group or engaged as the efforts from the perspective of the Aisa-Oceania
region with the data and services, which broad the national effort and products (public goods) to a large domain ofinternational perspective.

1.2 GEO Cold Regions Initiative (GEOCRI) Strategic Meeting: During the visit, a GEO Cold Regions
Initiative strategy meeting was held in the PEDSC division, extensive exchange was engaged by the PoCs to
GEOCRI, and players have been reported, and as the conclusion, few points development are prosed as follows,
ROIS-DS/PEDSC/NIPR activities are impressive with its international plan and engagement, Co-Develop on DataInformation-Decision Support activities for Cold Regions•

Develop a Task Group on Pilot Service (or Expert Team) with national researchers, Task Group on Pilot
Service, like Disaster, Water, and Sea Ice Services, for example, Snow and ice Disaster would be apotential pilot service at several different countries.

•

Collaboration with ROADs/SAON Passion, and international bodies, initiate a talk online with SAON
and its ROADs strategy, and adopt it to be a base. joint group, and implementation of service with thedata, aiming to the GEO Declaration of Cape Town 2023 (see : https://www.geocri.org/news/the-geopost-2025strategy-earth-intelligence-for-all).

•Funding opportunities in AO or broad communities, NSFC\JSPS\NRF call on New Generation
Databases and Data-Empowering Technologies, collaboration with the international fundings, forexample, the Belmont Forum.

2. Science Development and Data Management
As for Data Sharing and connections in domestic bodies, the way forward of current is fine at an international
level, which is still a model for other countries, while the technique innovation is critical by recruiting andemploying more international employees, especially in the field of AI and Big Data, and the current Big Model, thecoming effort call for infrastructure, that can be used by most of the scientists for the knowledge discovery.
ArCSII and its Research Activities: The project ArCSII is well developed in the structure at a quite
integration scheme, with all the scientists from nature science, society, and economy. This is from the nature of
Polar activities, while the core of it is the samples and data collected from the expedition. Another nature of thepolar research and public goods is the sharing and coordination system of the public goods. The ArCSII isrecommended to report in the international level consortium expanding the impact. The potential place is GEO andits side event with GEOCRI, SAON and its ArcticGEOSS, and ASSW session with international organizations, orit can be linked with the SIOS, which is also Japan-tagged.
Potential Collaboration with Chinese Data activities: China initiated 20 national-level data centers,
especially the polar data center (by PRIC), and CASEarth Data Portal (by AIR-CAS), which are more than happy
to have connections and exchange, the applications and research activities that could be together develop.
•

Digital Arctic and its services: this based on the activities of big data, providing services for the
shipping, SDGs, innovation technique are compulsory, the science committee on the Digital Poles has
been established under the Chinese Committee (CN) - International Committee on Digital Earth.

•

Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): As for the international research center for UN SDGs
(CBAS) is an big data support decision maker (SDG) center, which is open for all connection over theworld, and this is a good interface for joint activities on the SDGs in Arctic and its SDG13: climate
actions, the report jointly would be much welcome also.

•

Data activities convening in Asia Oceania: joint activities in AO through the convening power of Japanand China communities in the filed of data science in Asia and Oceania regions.

•

AI and Data Reconstruction for Arctic Sea Ice: develop the emergency technology of AI for the sea
ice data reconstruction from the satellite data of SDGSAT-1, Gaofen dataset, and compliment with JAXA
dataset in the Arctic and Antarctic regions.

•

GEOCRI: jointly activities under the umbrella of Group on Earth Observations in Japan or China, forexample, the HiMAC Workshop (himac2023).

3. Benchmark Institutions
GEO and its GEOSS: A central part of Group on Earth Observations (GEO), and its Mission is to build the
Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS), could check via www.geoportal.org. GEOSS is a set ofcoordinated, independent Earth observation, information and processing systems that interact and provide access todiverse information for a broad range of users in both public and private sectors. GEOSS facilitates the sharing ofenvironmental data and information collected from the large array of observing systems contributed by countries
and organizations within GEO. Further, GEOSS ensures that these data are accessible, of identified quality andprovenance, and interoperable to support the development of tools and the delivery of information services. Thus,
GEOSS increases our understanding of Earth processes and enhances predictive capabilities that underpin sounddecision-making: it provides access to data, information and knowledge to a wide variety of users.
The infrastructure and data basis of global players are good example for the PEDSC (ROIS-DS) activities, forexample, the technique issue of the interoperability between the domestic universities or research centers, thiswould keep Japanese PEDSC to be with an international level and exchange the data with other country andinternational organizations.
Website: https://www.geoportal.org/?m:activeLayerTileId=osm&f:dataSource=dab
GEO Knowledge Hub: The GEO Knowledge Hub (GKH) is a central cloud-based digital library providing accessto Earth Observations applications developed by the GEO Work Programme Activities. The GEO Knowledge Hub
It is part of the GEOSS Infrastructure and helps the Group on Earth Observations (GEO) to advance Open
Knowledge, cited from the website of GEO Knowledge Hub. The scope of the GKH is to promote the replicability
and re-usability of EO Applications by sharing with the end users, all the Knowledge Resources essential to fully
understand and re-use them. All knowledge resources of a registered EO application, will be openly shared,
curated and organized into a Knowledge Package, including: (A) Research papers and reports describing methods
and results; (B) Software algorithms and cloud computing resources used for processing; (C) In situ and satellite
imagery data used and; (D) Results for verification.
The data federated by GEOSS Portal, and the tool resource are centered in the GKH, which is the development
based on the last development of the cloud infrastructure. The open science and open knowledge are the mainstream for the EO-based science discovery and data evidenced knowledge gap filling activities.
Website: https://gkhub.earthobservations.org/
CASEarth and its Data portal: The Big Earth Data Science Engineering Program (CASEarth) was officiallyapproved on January 1, 2018, as a Strategic Priority Research Program (Class A) of the Chinese Academy of
Sciences (CAS) with an implementation period of five years. CASEarth aims to draw advantages from extensive
resources of CAS and other units at home and abroad to develop a data sharing platform for big data and cloudservices, which is the CASEarth portal, to cater for the modern data intensive scientific applications for a wide
variety of fields including resource management, environmental sciences, biology, and ecology and many others.
The platform would promote technological innovations in the field of Big Earth Data, support major breakthroughs
and scientific discoveries in Earth system sciences, enable all-round macro decision-making support and publicknowledge dissemination services, and also function as a science-based decision support system for developing
major strategies for regional or global sustainable development. The CASEarth projects is a milestone project forthe data science and infrastructure for support the science evidence to the UN SDGs.
Website：http://english.casearth.com/index.php
CBAS, the International Research Center of Big Data for Sustainable Development Goals (CBAS), which
has formally been established on September 22, 2020. CBAS facilitates the implementation of Transforming ourworld: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and organize global efforts to adopt science, technology, andinnovation towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). As an international research center within thecontext of a "science for sustainability" framework, it develops scientific products, methods and technologies fromglobal to local scales to ensure global access to the latest, most reliable information on the SDG indicators. It also
work to mobilize the technological and data resources necessary to analyze and visualize information for informed
actions and policies, with fair and open access to all. CBAS develop a Big Earth Data platform and operate a series

of scientific satellites for SDGs that provide data sources tailored to measuring the SDG indicators. Education
initiatives and a think tank will also contribute to existing global efforts towards human resource development andtraining. The main basis is the big earth data infrastructures, including the CASEarth Data portal, and the launched
SDGSAT-1 satellite dedicated to the SDGs addressing in the new era of 21 century.
Website: http://www.cbas.ac.cn/en/

Dr. Prof. Yubao QIU,
E-mail: qiuyb@aircas.ac.cn
PoC and co-lead to Cold Regions Initiative of Group on Earth Observations (GEO CRI)International Research Center of Big Data for Sustainable Development Goals (CBAS), and Aerospace
Information Research Institute Chinese Academy of Sciences (AIR-CAS)