Slides from plenary presentation given at the Science for a Sustainable Mekong River System Workshop, September 17, 2014

1. Improving Data Management
Capacity in the Mekong Basin
Using SEAD
Dharma Akmon, PhD
SEAD Manager of Education and Outreach
Science for a Sustainable Mekong River System, Ho Chi Minh City
September 17, 2014

2. Some Workshop Themes
“Sharing what we know about the
Mekong.”
“Science needs cooperation to work well.”
“Avoid duplicating effort”
“Need data to make an actionable set of recommendations”
“data integration”
“Effective system for managing and making high quality
data available”
“research collaboration”
“increase data and information sharing among MRC
member countries”

3. http://sead-data.net/

4. SEAD is a Collaborative, NSF-funded Project
Margaret Hedstrom, PI
James Myers, Co-PI
Beth Plale, Co-PI
Praveen Kumar, Co-PI

5. SEAD Can Increase Data Management Capacity
1. Provides Platform for Collaboration During Data
Collection, Processing, and Analysis
2. Serves as a Staging Area for Data Sharing and
Preservation
3. Connects Researchers to Others and Their Data

6. 1. Provides a Platform for Collaboration

7. Project Spaces Features
• Secure, team controlled
• Upload any type of data file (e.g. Excel, GIS Shapefiles,
images, video, etc.)
• Bring in data from other sources
• Built for data
• Tools for adding information that will help you and your
team understand and find the data later

8. Value Added to Research Team
• Central place for team’s data
• Allows you to add as much or as little that will help you
use and find data
• Can look at things without downloading them
• Can see collection in a kind of aggregate
• Don’t have to build your own system

9. 2. Serves as a Staging for Data
Sharing/Preservation
• Tools to make “pre-print” data open to others
• “Virtual Archive” that preserves data and makes openly
available.

10. SEAD Virtual Archive
SEAD partners with institutional repositories to archive data
long-term.
Data receive permanent identifiers so they can be cited and
found.
SEAD maintains copy of metadata, registers with other
search portals (DataONE), and provides search tools
across the repositories.

11. 3. Connects Researchers to Others and Their Data

12. Person Profile

13. Organizational Profile

14. SEAD’s Current Status
Working with 18 projects
• Lower Mississippi Flood Project
• National Center for Earth System Dynamics
• Washtenaw County Parks
• Stewardship Network
• University of Michigan Biological Station
• College Conservation Collaboration

15. SEAD’s Current Status
Year 3 of 5 with potential of 5 more years of renewal
Active development phase where we’re seeking partners
willing to provide input that will help us improve
Join us:
Try things out on demo space: http://sead-demo.
ncsa.illinois.edu/acr/
Sign up for your own space by contacting
dharmrae@umich.edu