1. Summary

The amount of data for the present, past and future of earth environment is now expanding explosively, but some data are just left unnoticed due to the insufficient information infrastructure to utilize them. The integration of data is becoming more and more as research is required to be more and more multidisciplinary using not only data from the same field, but from other fields.

I am now doing a few research projects for the integration of earth science data. The current status is summarized as follows.

Project Purpose Target Scale
Digital Typhoon Integration of science data and social data; Integration of present, past and future Single Small
Vertical Earth Integration across disciplines (vertical integration); Integration across organizations (horizontal integration) Multiple Middle
DIAS / CPS Integration of heterogeneous large-scale data; Integration of data in large-scale information space Multiple Large

2. Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

Sustainable Development Goals, or SDGs, was formally adopted during United Nations "Sustainable Development Summit 2015" with 17 goals and 169 targets. Some of our data can contribute to SDGs.


7. Affordable and clean energy

11. Sustainable cities and communities

13. Climate action

15. Life on land

17. Partnerships for the goals
Electrical Japan Risk Watcher Digital Typhoon Seiyou Status DIAS

Icons are available at Resources | The Global Goals

3. Societal Benefit Area

Here an important concept is "societal benefit areas." These are the area of research in which data can be effectively used to improve decision making for societal benefit. "Global Earth Observation System of Systems" (GEOSS) lists 9 areas as follows.

  1. Disasters
  2. Health
  3. Energy
  4. Climate
  5. Water
  6. Weather
  7. Ecosystems
  8. Agriculture
  9. Biodiversity

What kind of data should be observed for each societal benefit area should be decided by domain experts, but the role of informatics is to integrate those data and provide them for better decision making. Informatics is also expected to provide its expertise for proposing better data observation, processing, and utilization. From this perspective, my research can be categorized as follows.

  1. Disasters
  2. Health
  3. Energy
  4. Climate
  5. Water
  6. Weather
  7. Ecosystems
  8. Agriculture
  9. Biodiversity

3. References (Complete List)

  1. Asanobu KITAMOTO, "Book Review: Al Gore, An Inconvenient Truth", Journal of Japanese Society for Artificial Intelligence (JSAI), Vol. 23, No. 2, pp. 307-308, doi:10.11517/jjsai.23.2_307, 2008-3 (in Japanese) [ Abstract ]
  2. Asanobu KITAMOTO, "Integration of Earth Environmental Data", Symposium on Cross-disciplinary Data-Centric Science, 2008-4 (Panel) (in Japanese) [ Abstract ]
  3. Asanobu KITAMOTO, "Contribution of Data-Centric Science to Societal Benefit Areas - Toward Better Actions in Agriculture, Biodiversity, and Disasters", International Symposium on Global Knowledge Circulation -Designing Integrated Social Infrastructure, 2012-12 [ Abstract ]
  4. Asanobu KITAMOTO, Akiyuki KAWASAKI, Hiroko KINUTANI, Katsunori TAMAKAWA, Ryosuke SHIBASAKI, Masaru KITSUREGAWA, "Data Integration and Analysis System (DIAS): Data sharing for solving societal issues on earth environment", Joho Kanri, Vol. 58, No. 6, pp. 413-421, doi:10.1241/johokanri.58.413, 2015-9 (in Japanese) [ Abstract ]