European Geosciences Union
Division on Earth and Space Science Informatics
President: Helen M. Glaves (essi@egu.eu)
Deputy President: Jens Klump (jens.klump@csiro.au)
As far as informatics and information technology are concerned, the ESSI division deals with Community-driven and multidisciplinary challenges and solutions. This include topics like: data model and metadata standardization, spatial data infrastructure interoperability, semantics services, quality and uncertainty information encoding and propagation, geospatial data processing, environmental model accessability, big data management, and data visualization for scientific discovery.
The 2018 Ian McHarg Medal is awarded to Kerstin A. Lehnert for exceptional contributions to the advancement of informatics and, in particular, her pioneering efforts on open, transparent and reproducible science.
A new statement on good practice in the evaluation of researchers and research programmes has been posted by three national academies (Académie des Sciences, Leopoldina and Royal Society). It states that “the use of bibliometric indicators for early career scientists must in particular be avoided. Such use will tend to push scientists who are building their career into wellestablished/fashionable research fields, rather than encouraging them to tackle new scientific challenges.” (p. 4). Read the full statement at: https://royalsociety.org/~/media/policy/Publications/2017/08-12-2017-royal-society-leopoldina-and-academie-des-sciences-call-for-more-support-for-research-evaluators.pdf
The number of presentations from ECS in the ESSI sessions has been low during recent EGU General Assemblies. We are hence currently trying to get greater involvement and recognition for the ECS in the ESSI Division. How to get involved as ECS in the ESSI division? Join the ESSI ECS mailing list We have a dedicated ESSI ECS mailing list that can be used for discussion between the ESSI ECSs. It is also used for announcements, such as dedicated meetings …
With the EGU General Assembly just over a week away, we have a number of updates on the meeting, happening in Vienna from 8–13 April. Our conference organiser Copernicus has launched a great mobile app, and we recently announced a number of measures to reduce the environmental impact of the conference, from encouraging people to travel by train to introducing an option for participants to offset their carbon footprint. On the EGU blog, GeoLog, you can find posts about the city of Vienna, and a selection of Union-wide events, short courses and policy activities at the EGU General Assembly. For students taking part in the Outstanding Student Poster and PICO, there are also some tips from the judges on how to prepare a poster or PICO presentation.
This month, we have also announced that we are accepting nominations for EGU awards and medals. We encourage the EGU membership to consider gender, geographical and cultural balance when nominating outstanding Earth, planetary and space scientists at various career stages.
Last but not the least, we have also announced that we are launching two new publications at the 2018 General Assembly: a journal, Geoscience Communication, and a compilation, the Encyclopedia of Geosciences. Find these and many other EGU updates below.