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National Dialogue Session with EPA Science Forum Attendees
May 21, 2008
Washington, DC
Introductions/setting stage: EPA Division Director in Office of Environmental Information
Discussion moderator: Deputy Assistant Administrator, Office of Environmental Information (EPA)
USGS representative: Interested in metrics on sustainability, particularly water resources
- Summary statistics and synthesis of water data, choropleth maps, trends
- Geography – political boundaries don’t match/relate to resource boundaries
- Water quality data are point based and hard to synthesize, 305b reports are based on judgmental data, not statistically designed
- Summaries by parameter, geography, country/national
- Some useful statistical summaries are no longer published – they weren’t ‘rocket science’ but they are not done any more
- [EPA’s Office of Water is coordinating with states, improving boundary information]
NGO representative
- Different levels of sophistication of users
- 9 counties, 2 states, dealing with water quality and quantity
- Don’t have science background among the politicians and local interested folks, they don’t know the questions to ask
- There is lots of available data but don’t know where to start
- Need higher level of analysis, need technical assistance to present data in useful forms for lay people
- We shouldn’t try to be 100% perfect, politicians don’t have that luxury, the science tries to be 100% and is never done
- Social sciences pull stuff together better – you need to pull people together better to get complete answers
- Need to work with locals and USGS, hard to get the players to coordinate
- NGO created to get people together, there are disconnects between 4 agencies – EPA HQ or Regions at the table; geospatial resolution, doesn’t match across programs
- Solutions take broad participation
- Fish kills, droughts
- Where do we go for data to convince politicians?
- Need human touch on interpretation of data
University student:
- I want the data, time series
- Need USGS, Acid Deposition program data, NOAA
- Geospatial disjoints
- NOAA site most navigable and easiest to use
- Caution and limitation: monitoring sites come and so there are gaps in monitoring data
- Ice core, sediment data, need place to share data that are not just WQ data
USGS: Need to watch Quality of data
Student: if data are tied to publication, should look at that as pedigree
USGS:
- User beware
- What about volunteer efforts where they did sample collection? Who did the analysis? We need to know the sources of data
EPA:
- Quality needs to be kept up
- Collect once, use many
- Reliability and usability
NGO:
- Found 20 years of data in a file cabinet, on yellow pads of paper
- How do we share the data?
- We need folks to submit it, QC it, and publish it
USGS: Top managers want pictures not tables, we are the ‘old dogs.’
EPA: Geospatial stacking can help in presentation
University Professor:
- Looking at research and education, we want EVERYTHING, observations, micro level and geospatial, land cover over decades and today’s pollen
- Well process and visualized data plus raw data for research
- We’d like PORTAL so we can search for data, document data so we can key work search and metadata on information
- Need interoperable data
EPA: data come from states and inventories submitted to EPA
University Professor:
- Like AirNow visualization
- We want simulations data, models, documentation (observations + simulations) and we want to know what you do with it
- Want data immediately, standard format, web service, downloadable
EPA Researcher:
- Want EPA and NIH data
- Conflicting arguments, garbage in, garbage out, data on the net is of unknown quality, “EPA sources” are not actually EPA, data come from States and industry
- Need data quality index; need to decide is quality adequate
- Old toxicology data, “published” but not up to today’s methods
EPA: Need to consider what use is and related criteria. We need to do better job of getting people to understand quality and use appropriately
Contractor:
- Data usability must overlay everything else, EPA vs others making decisions
- Especially local decision making
- Tell folks how to use data better
- Citizens vs Agency and data needs
- Decision based data needs to be collected
- Everyone is responsible for deciding appropriate quality
- Collection and design of data bases need to consider quality
NGO:
- End user does not care where the data came from
- NACEPT representative has said that EPA needs to play well internally, then with other agencies, them make information available
- EPA should bring people together and get information together
EPA Scientist,
- biologists, teacher, IT teacher – EPA.gov not useful to teachers to teach people about science
- Tailor information to population you are trying to address, Junior High and High school students are like average population
- Need lay fact sheets, what it is, what to do, risk, EPA should do that
EPA Region1 staff: each office has own presentation and style, need guidelines to better index information
EPA: we are trying to redesign website for more common look and findability
EPA Researcher– chemical specific information, available at other agencies, better linking don’t reinvent information
University professor: GEOSS question -- what are you doing?
EPA GEOSS lead: focusing on EPA, resource but recognize need to cross to other agencies and countries, looking at other agencies’ best practices
USGS:
- bigger picture, other federal agencies, look more widely line NCSE, Earth Portal, Google Earth
- Aren’t you going against Google? Is this a market driven business?
- There wouldn’t be a market if we were doing our job well
EPA: We are working with Nature Serve, Google has taken FRS, all are concerned about quality
NGO:
- Education as marketing, how do we use marketing practices for private sector to get data out?
- Check out City Managers Conference
- Cannot be one-shot deal, has to be continual process, seek out educators and other who might not know discussion going on
EPA: We need to continue, feedback regroup, then recycle our processes.
NGO2: communications
- Connect research with heat program offices are doing with information, internal connections don’t work very well
- Emerging issue – what’s happening? Activities?
Q: What would you do?
USGS:
- Transition, new ideas will come, new business models should be considered
- Bring Google, Nature Serve partners and maybe save some money
EPA Researcher 2:
- Have a brainstorm workshop, bring Google, universities together
- Find digital natives, familiar with open source to find what we can do