Presentation slides from the plenary session on Scientific Quality organized by the ESIP Information Quality Cluster (IQC). The IQC has formally defined information quality
as a combination of the following four aspects of quality, spanning the
full life cycle of data products: 1. Scientific quality; 2. Product quality; 3. Stewardship quality; and 4. Service quality. The purpose of this session was to focus on scientific quality, and
especially on uncertainty. A panel of invited speakers from a variety of
Earth science disciplines addressed questions such as: How is
uncertainty determined and characterized in the products of their
research or application? What are the major side effects and limitations
of common statistical techniques used to quantify and characterize
uncertainty? What is the impact of uncertainty on the quality of their
data products? How is data uncertainty accounted for when multiple
sources of data are spliced and woven into a single product? How do they
document and convey the information about uncertainty to other
scientific users? What is the best way of conveying uncertainty to the
(possibly skeptical) public? This session provided expert knowledge from different perspectives on a relatively
focused topic–Data Uncertainty–that is extremely challenging but
critical in both establishing and elevating the user communities’
confidence in Earth Science data. The session was followed by a breakout session of the IQC with an additional invited presentation and detailed discussion among the speakers and attendees. Hopefully, these presentations will
lead to a community-wide discussion on the
problems, challenges, and solutions to a wide range of issues
surrounding data uncertainty.