CISA Seminar: Malcolm Atkinson

There are many occasions on which information from multiple independent organisations need to be combined. To make this much easier federations of such organisations attempt to provide a coherent and holistic environment in which practitioners can do their data-driven work.  This is not easy, as different providers have very different priorities, with different policies, timescales and evolution rates. One-off solutions prevail. They tend to vanish soon after the resources (experts investing time crossing boundaries) disappear, e.g. when a construction project ends. So I have started asking the question about how we could build such data-driven federations in a more sustainable way? I haven't progressed far, so I hope CISA colleagues will have the answers! If we can meet this challenge it will be valuable in taking on societal challenges, research, health care, government, decision making and in business. There are good opportunities to explore solutions with geosciences and environmental sciences before we tackle domains with ethical and commercial sensitivity. This is the sort of issue the ATI should address!