From Observational Data to Information IG

Our aim is to advance shared understanding of the relationship between data and information, primarily in the context of environmental research infrastructures for observational data and semantic information about observed environments. While commonly used, the terms data and information are poorly understood. Typically understood as the values organized in rows and columns, in reality there are observational data, experimental data, simulation data. There are feature, trend, geospatial data sets. There are primary data, secondary data, derivative data, operational data, metadata. Furthermore, we increasingly speak of mining information from data and transferring information into knowledge. However, what mined information is and how information is represented and recorded in research infrastructures remains obscure. Knowledge is even more complex. There is a need to clarify what data, information and possibly knowledge are, and how these concepts relate in the research infrastructure context. We provide a platform to advance this subject matter.