Open data during a crisis is not as cool as you want it to be, or is it?
Greg Gearheart
Deputy Director, Office of Information Management and Analysis, at California State Water Resources Control Board
I am still stunned by the fires that hammered Los Angeles county earlier this month, not unlike I have felt with other climate disasters in California and the west, recently. I want to help and oversee open data and open science work and thought I would start a dialog about how open data and informatics we have in place could help. So I quickly threw together this list of existing data resources at the CA Water Boards (built and others maintained by my colleagues) may be helpful over the coming months to folks helping recover from climate disasters. This is a first draft and work in progress. My hope is that this post turns into a resource that lives on our website, and that new and better data and tools get driven by the feedback loops of people using, trying to use or being frustrated with our data/tool issues. Government is iterative, lol.
The first map thing I will share is our current summary of prior, post-fire water quality monitoring efforts in California that my team has compiled data from:
But before I get too far into maps and data, I want to frame how and why we do our work to build better data ecosystems, not just reactionary data “tools.”
Equity and the role of data during and in between crises
Government data accessibility is a direct reflection of “government attention to” issues, communities, and ultimately places. Times of crisis reveal the urgent need for data and information and government (and other) services. In between the peaks of crises lies a vast “area beneath the curve” of need, trauma and work potential to deliver services to the marginalized, underserved, and outright neglected communities. If you remember your calculus, this area under the curve adds up to a lot over time. For decades and maybe centuries the people of this land have worked to steward land, water and natural resources. In the past five plus years our state government has centered these communities. The Water Boards and staff I work with have taken extra efforts to center the work we do with data to for tribes and communities historically overburdened and underserved. We have some emergent tools for this and I will highlight these first.? This work is by nature an iterative process and our long view of centering the most marginalized communities in our data work is built on proven principles that by doing so we are thereby lifting all others as we proceed.
Equity data tools
Tribal water data initiative
The team in OIMA has been doing work to center the interests of tribes since at least 2015. This is hard work, for all parties. It has now become a big part of our work and touches multiple program subareas. First, we maintain a map of tribal water data layers. And this map is open source, built largely by an amazing stream of interns, fellows, volunteers and tribal advocates. We also have initiatives around core areas of our work, like the bioaccumulation program. This program has built up 20 years of data on legacy and emerging contaminant presence in fish and other food source tissues. Most recently the bioaccumulation program pivoted to align the tribal voices into our planning and data collection,while trying to not create huge burdens on them along the way. A longer running effort revolves around the cultural practices of tribes in waters and around them with respect to harmful algal blooms, which have a strong relationship with fires and fire ecology. And in more recent years our team has leveraged the cool work of environmental DNA collection to help inform tribal questions and needs. And we have more projects described here:
Some examples of our datasets and tools
A primary resources to list is a page that contains a summary of our amazing catalog (updated) of data and databases: https://waterboards.ca.gov/resources/data_databases/?
A subset of the datasets maintained by the Water Boards can be found on the State of California's Open Data Portal under the 'Water' category (https://data.ca.gov/). That platform provides web services that enhance data accessibility, and are constantly adding, updating and revising metadata and data to datasets on that platform. Note that the datasets found on that site mirror some of the datasets described in the table below (open data meets a higher accessibility standard).
Now I am going to list a few of our tools that I will try to explain how to use, and hopefully engage some of you on their potential use and ultimately I would like to build feedback loops on ways to make them more useful.?
I am going to break these resources into two, large and arbitrary buckets - (1) data about our work [Tribal wand (2) data about water. There is some crossover, obviously, but this may help navigate the long list.
Data about our work
An unlikely place to look for interesting Water Board data is our “Performance Report” - it has lots of data (some refreshes throughout the year) and data resources organized, sometimes, in ways that could be useful.?
领英推荐
For example:?
Inspections and inspection reports at facilities:
Animal facilities data and map:
Other Performance Report views of LA area:
Water quality facilities, inspections by program and maps
You can visit each of these databases and explore them via their interface(s), or you can go to a tool like that one that shows facility inspection data by program (and uses all these sources). Where and how do we report out on spending our money and collecting fees (which pay for almost all of our programs)?
Annual budget (23/24):
Annual fees funding all water quality programs (23/24 report, 22/23 data):
Data about water
[to be continued!]
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Please let me know your thoughts as I build out the rest of this article. Thanks!
Deputy Director, Office of Information Management and Analysis, at California State Water Resources Control Board
1 个月I will draft up a new article when I get a moment (before my brain loses this thought, ha) on a proposal. The basic framework is private-public collaboratory, open government data served up in ways that iterate towards more interoperable, private role is to support with data as available but also be on the standby to deploy quick solutions for specific event criteria. The idea is to cover the whole timeline, between climate disaster events and during, but treat these a bit separately. We will need some good coordination with OES data folks to learn from and not confound the data ecosystem. During crisis data is not always well suited to open gov data but context is always a wild card. So we would aim to make the open gov data as ready and available as possible for quick use. In between crises data will be used to help plan for and mitigate or adapt to expected conditions, learning from each event as we proceed. The fabric as a whole should be geospatial based and served in redundant places in the event of server fails. The paper shared in this thread should be dissected to understand how and what user(s) needs are not being met in most recent fires, etc. Thanks all for help. I will still add the water data resources.
Director/CEO, International Computer Science Institute, Berkeley, CA
1 个月Good insight
Deputy Director, Office of Information Management and Analysis, at California State Water Resources Control Board
1 个月I think building a useful, open data ecosystem for climate disasters in CA, or really almost anywhere in the nation, is doable. The obstacles are everywhere but most are able to overcome. Or they don't really matter other than serve as excuses or distractions. This would take significant resources to build and maintain. And because of this there would be to be a value proposition to balance risk, especially if government is going to pay. I have to say that CA government is not generally ready to take big data modernization risks. The recent work of the folks doing climate justice work is possibly a template for how to build data platforms that could stand up custom, quickly deployed interfaces with interoperable data choices ready to go. Starting with an eye towards focusing on and centering interests and needs of tribal and other historically marginalized communities, providing critical planning, mitigation and adaption data and tools, could serve as a pilot platform to build up larger ecosystems. So 2025 seems like a good year to try to do better.
Program Manager CalEPA - SWRCB
1 个月I have taken a few excerpts from the article posted by Patrick Atwater, written by Brianna R. Pagan, PhD to elaborate on this topic. “Our industry prioritizes military and politically expedient uses of its technology, while slashing support for humanitarian data efforts because they aren’t profitable.” “American taxpayers already fund technologies that could save lives in disasters like this. …But we must ask ourselves—as individuals, as companies, as leaders in this field—is this the best we can do? Is this the legacy we want to leave?” Our onstacles lie entirely within the conclusion drawn from the statements she made, and the anwers to her questions. In very general terms, our nation and our democracy have chosen profit and power over people. I know that sounds simplistic, but the evidence shows that our government, in particular the federal executive and legislative branches, have been completely co-opted by private interests. Most relevant, the “defence” and hi-tech industries. This is the wall we’re up against. These are the powerful forces that stand in the way. Yes we can do better. The question is - how do we get our representatives to stop selling out to corporate greed? I agree with Leland Searles - “impossible “
Ecological Consultant and Business Owner Writer and Editor, Writing Consultant
1 个月Too many data are in private hands, and they are unlikely to see the light of day. Some states are actively shielding their agency data and collecting as little as possible to serve private interests and keep citizens underinformed. Despite open records laws and lip service to transparency, access often requires drawn-out FOIA requests or legal suits. How we can create an open system is beyond me, and even then the results are subject to well-funded propaganda efforts and private media ownership. I’m becoming a bit of a Socratic gadfly, or maybe just an ordinary gadfly, these days, because I don’t see very many escape routes from the existing state of affairs on water data or other crucial issues. What’s next? A ban on government employees using “water” and “quality” in the same paragraph? My heart is with you, but my brain says “impossible.”