The 2017 Arctic Science Summit Week was held from March 31 - April 7th, 2017 in Prague, Czech Republic.  Arctic data was a very popular topic that was discussed in many plenary and session talks.  Prof. Terry Callaghan spoke about the development of the INTERACT observing station network, including the importance of sharing data among these stations and with the broader community.  A highlight of the conference was a talk by Mike Jaypoody about the work being done by Ittaq in Clyde River, Nunavut to develop a "cyberatlas" to share data.

The Arctic Data Committee and its members were active participants in the meeting.  Session 13.1 focused on the intersection of Arctic data and information science and systems science.  The session was convened by Peter Pulsifer (ADC member for U.S.) and Shannon Vossepoel of the Arctiic Instititute of North America and active member of ADC.  In total, the session included eleven oral presentations and nine posters over three days.  Topics ranged from the state of museum-based data collections, to semantic interoperability, to agent based modeling of socio-ecological systems.  The session was well attended by data professionals, researchers and policy makers.

There was much discussion during and after the session about semantic interoperability. Thsi is in keeping with discussions at the last and previous ADC annual meetings.  As a follow up action, in keeping with its Terms of Referecn, ADC is working to establish a vocabularies and semantics working group under the leadership of Dr. Øystein Godøy of The Norwegian Meteorological Institute (ADC member for WMO).  A collaborative opportunity with the Interagency Arctic Researc Policy Committee (IARPC) in the U.S. will discussed at the next IARPC Arctic Data Sub Team on 27 April 2017 @ 13:00 Eastern Time.  Contact P. Pulsifer for connection information.

Additionally, discion on the emerging trend toward cloud-based data management platforms and virtual research environments was prominent.  In this model, the user is provided with a set of web-accessible tools that can be applied to the data hosted on the platform.  This can be a powerful model that reduces the effort required to download and transfrom large data sets, while promoting collaboration using the platform.

An update on ADC activities was presented at the SAON board meeting on April 7th and was well received.  More detailed follow up on the meeting will be provided in the coming weeks and will be posted here.  SAON will be holding a retreat at the end of June to establish a detailed strategic plan for SAON.  ADC will be asked to engage before, during and after this process to ensure that the perspectives of the Arctic data community are represented.