CAPARDUS Deliverable 1.2 Report on Arctic standards, protocols and framework model ,Version 1.0.

Abstract

Standards can act as common language and practices among stakeholders when aiming to share and use observing systems, data, ensure safety, and many other activities in the Arctic. Equipment manufacturers, observing programs, data producers, citizens, and governments all benefit from the creation of open standards. It is vital that the standards development process ensures that all interested parties work together in the context of openness and transparency. In particular as data becomes the world’s most valuable resource, it becomes ever more important that the digital ecosystem for data be designed and managed in a way that ensures sufficient user access, transparency, accountability, and quality assurance. This report presents a review of a subset of Arctic domains that could benefit from some level of standardization. Standards are typically technical documents, while standardization is a human process that takes place in an ecosystem of interrelated and interdependent human actors, institutions, norms, and practices (including standards), technologies, information objects, and relationships. To enhance standards adoption, it is equally important to understand the ecosystem and its subsystems (general kinds of things, linkages and flows in the system) and the details of its interacting parts (e.g. the specific organizations, technologies, people and their needs). To manage this complex task, the report introduces a relatively simple framework, supported by emerging advanced information structures (linked open data represented using the Resource Description Framework, ontologies) that help to document and understand the ecosystem to support standards development, maintenance, and implementation. Section 2 establishes that standardization is a challenging and complex process. The term standard can be vague: some may see a standard as a formal set of documents and compliance process, while others see a set of rules or agreements established by a “community” that are based on norms and ethical behaviors. In this broad gradation, there is overlap between more formal top-down standards and bottom-up community developed “conventions” or “best practices”. To add to the complexity in the Arctic context, standards do not exist in a single research or social domain. Research includes many disciplines, the peoples of the Arctic and focusing on many economic, social, and research opportunities. Governments have a mandate to cover all aspects of the Arctic at the same time as the world experiences dramatic environmental, social and geopolitical change. Section 3 documents the methods used to start the process of developing an arctic standards framework. The initial scope (modified due to COVID-19) included extensive in-person community engagement. The primary method used was a systematic literature review focused on four key domains relevant to standardization: cross-cutting themes, observing, safety and data. Literature reviewed was stored in an online bibliographic database and will be made available for community use through the CAPARDUS website.