We are delighted to announce a significant expansion of the membership of our Expert Network as we enter the network’s second year of activity. With 29 new experts joining the network this year, together with those members remaining from the previous year, our network now stands at 43 members. We will be updating the list of members shortly
A key part of the ‘Constructing a Digital Environment’ (CDE) programme has been the formation and varied activities of the Expert Network. Working alongside the research teams delivering first the Feasibility Studies and latterly the Demonstrator research projects that are also supported by CDE, the experts have provided a source of deep knowledge and experience in the role and opportunity of the application of digital techniques to advance environmental science.
Our expert membership is comprised of three distinct groups. There are senior experts, established in their careers, who can draw across their long experience and professional networks. There are the early career expert researchers for whom the ready access and application of these tools has become a second nature and additionally, there are international experts who are able to help align our work to international best practices. Together the experts have been able to apply their knowledge and enthusiasm for this key area to a number of project developments.
As reported across this website, there have been a range of expert network activities over the past year which have helped for a nucleus for advancing digital approaches. Notable amongst these are:
- The operation of a series of ‘COVID-19 Digital Sprint Hackathon’ activities. Preceded by an ‘Ideathon’ to scope approaches, the hackathons considered the impacts that COVID-19 pandemic has exerted on themes including air quality, NetZero recovery, and functioning of ecosystem services. The ability of digital tools to visualise the outcomes of complex modelling, widening accessibility and inclusion for research results was further addressed. More details on the COVID-19 hackathons are online.
- The development of a series of ‘Digital Trails’ activities, addressing different NERC data centre data provision and the ease by which data sets can be found and extracted for use. NERC holds vast bodies of environmental data across its five data centres and the Trail activities have been designed to inform the centres about how researchers experience the ‘hunt’ for data. To date, the Digital Trails run comprise of ‘From the river catchment to deep ocean’ [UKCEH & BODC], and ‘From present to past meteorology around the globe’ [Met Office & CEDA]. More are planned. More details are online.
- The delivery of a popular programme of webinars has been run with leading speakers from their fields sharing their work and experience. Led by our experts, we have run two series of talks to date. The first series was on ‘Data for Decision Making’. The second series has been on ‘Law and Ethics in the Digital Environment’. We are planning the next series of webinars on ‘Sensing the Environment’ and will collaborate with the NERC Environmental Data Service for a future ‘Management of Environmental Data’ series. All the webinar videos are available on the CDE YouTube Channel – linked from our website webinar page online.
- Lastly, there has been a very exciting project, run across the whole network to develop a ‘Horizon Scanning’ exercise, to try and understand and document the emergent technologies and digital approaches that offer the opportunity to impact on environmental science. This project will result in a report.
We anticipate a series of similar activities being undertaken in the year to come, and now with the new influx of experts joining the network, there will be a growing level of activity and outcomes to the benefit of the wider environmental science community.