Data Usability The Forgotten Segment of Environmental Data Workflows

Metadata

• Author: Dosemagen, Shannon
• Full Title: Data Usability: The Forgotten Segment of Environmental Data Workflows
• Type: #snippet✂️
• Tags: #datastewardship
• URL: https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/climate/articles/10.3389/fclim.2022.785269/full

Highlights

• Data about the environment and its impact on health come from many places, including scientists and researchers, government, and communities who are activated to collect their own data. There are an equal number of issues with environmental data: scarcity in some places and overabundance in others; difficulties collecting data based on timing, accessibility of tools, and technical complexities of data requirements; figuring out where and how data can be disseminated for use in different scenarios. (View Highlight)
• Community science (Dosemagen and Parker, 2019) and community-owned and managed research (Heaney et al., 2007). These center scientific practice around the questions of communities, seek to build co-equal partnerships between communities and scientists, and aim to leverage multiple forms of data (e.g., quantitative data from sensors, traditional, and local knowledge) to an actionable end1, often in support of addressing environmental injustices. (View Highlight)
• The Environmental Justice Mapping and Data Collection Act of 20218, Environmental Justice Act of 20219 and the Environmental Justice for All Act10 (View Highlight)
• Community data is not a replacement for government inaction, or an avenue leading to community-industry partnerships, but should be seen as a way for communities to build agency in political decision-making (View Highlight)
• This participatory collaboration will require a switch from the mindset of being a gatekeeper of this responsibility to being a conduit for working in partnership with the public. Building in processual transparency and points of clear input for communities, can work against the legacy of distrust in government by environmental justice communities. (View Highlight)