‘Unstructured Data’ Practices in Polar Institutions and Networks

October 30, 2014

Data Science Journal recently published a new manuscript by Paul A. Berkman, Arctic Options principle investigator and lead project coordinator, entitled ‘Unstructured Data’ Practices in polar institutions and networks: A case study with the Arctic Options project 

In this paper Berkman discusses the importance of mining information on the Arctic region that is both numeric (e.g. Geographic Information System (GIS) data, vessel Automatic Identification System (AIS) data, etc.) and textual (e.g. papers, reports, agreements, etc. ) in support of generating various infrastructure options for the region. Berkman focues on the ‘long tail of smaller, heterogeneous, and often unstructured datasets’ that ‘usually receive minimal data management consideration’, as observed in the 2013 Communiqué from the International Forum on Polar Data Activities in Global Data Systems.

As the case study, Arctic Options project illustrates how digital resources in natural language formats will be aggregated from diverse institutions that have Arctic remits, such as the Arctic Council (2013).

This paper was presented as invited keynote at the International Forum on Polar Data Activities in Global Data Systems (Polar Data Forum, 2013).

Berkman, Paul A. (2014) Unstructured Data’ Practices in polar institutions and networks: A case study with the Arctic Options project. Data Science Journal. Vol. 13, special issue – Highlights of the 2013 International Forum on ‘Polar Data Activities in Global Data Systems’. dx.doi.org/10.2481/dsj.IFPDA-11