ARDC Community Data Lab Co-design Workshop: HASS Geospatial Capability 

About the Event

The ARDC Community Data Lab (CDL) provides tools, datasets, analysis environments and collaboration options for humanities, arts, social sciences, and Indigenous research data communities in Australia. We are extending the second phase of CDL through the co-designing of a new capability to support research and research translation.

The ARDC invites you to a workshop to co-design a Humanities, Arts and Social Science (HASS) Geospatial Capability based on Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) standards-based software. This co-investment opportunity aims to address the challenges HASS researchers face in utilising the best practice OGC standards-based workflows and software to capture, store, share, analyse and visualise their geospatial data. 

The goal of the co-design workshop is to evaluate this co-investment opportunity to help develop a solution that supports new and expanded research.

Value of a Geospatial Capability to HASS and Indigenous Research

Humanities, Arts and Social Science (HASS) research focuses on people, how they interact with the world around them and the resulting artefacts in a variety of contexts. This research inherently involves geospatial data often incorporating temporal information. However, best practice Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) software and workflows for capturing, storing, sharing, analysing and visualising geospatial data often require high levels of technical literacy to deploy and use. 

Improving the accessibility of these tools and workflows could broaden the range and impact of geospatial HASS research. This support would also improve the value of geospatial datasets generated and used in HASS research by making them more interoperable and reusable.

A key constraint for HASS researchers that further complicates this problem is that they often require an institution specific geospatial software deployment when working with sensitive data to comply with research ethics approvals. For example, HASS researchers working with Indigenous data will have specific requirements to ensure controlled access to the data consistent with the CARE principles.

This capability aims to develop an easily reproducible institution specific deployment (e.g., containerised software stack) that enables all HASS researchers to benefit from using best practice OGC standards-based software to capture, store, share, analyse and visualise geospatial data. Specifically, the aim is to enable HASS researchers to work with geospatial data using off the shelf open source software through the development of HASS research case studies and training material for geospatial data. 

What to expect during the Workshop

Workshop participants are expected to actively engage in discussions. During the workshop, participants will be introduced to the problem to be addressed, along with the capability that we are proposing to develop as a solution to this problem for HASS and Indigenous research data communities.

The workshop will be held virtually via Zoom. Participants will join breakout rooms and respond to questions using a Miro board. Our goal is to gather feedback on the value of the proposed solution and to assess whether we’re addressing the problem in the most effective way.

The proposed solution has been developed by ARDC in partnership with the University of Melbourne and UNSW Sydney.

If you have difficulty accessing Zoom or Miro please let us know ahead of the workshop and we will provide alternative methods for you to provide your feedback.

After the workshop, we will:

1. Publish a report that captures the input that we have received
2. Publish a draft project plan, which will reflect insights from the workshop
3. Invite your feedback on the draft project plan
4. Use the feedback to inform the development of the final project plan.

Who will be speaking?

• Dr David Hackman, Project Manager, ARDC
• Jamie Archer, Product Manager (HASS & Indigenous RDC), ARDC
• Dr Daniel Russo-Batterham, Melbourne Data Analytics Platform, The University of Melbourne 
• Dr Emily Fitzgerald, Melbourne Data Analytics Platform, The University of Melbourne

Who should attend?

• HASS researchers who explicitly incorporate geospatial questions into their research. For example, art historians who research people, events and places related to the development and geographical spread of artistic movements. 
• HASS researchers who collect geospatial data as part of their research where it is not the primary focus of the research questions. However, the analysis and visualisation of the data could provide new insights and/or communicate research findings more effectively. 
• People who support HASS researchers in their use of digital research infrastructure (including research infrastructure providers and digital skills trainers)

What participants will gain from the session? 

• Contribute your use cases and experience about the capability 
• Discuss the capability and the challenges it addresses with your peers
• Help shape how the capability will be delivered for HASS researchers

Will the session be recorded?

The session will be recorded, but to ensure participants’ privacy, we will not publish a recording of the workshop.

Further HASS and Indigenous Research Data Commons resources

• ARDC Community Data Lab Project 
• HASS and Indigenous Research Data Commons
• Resources for HASS and Indigenous research

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Have questions?

Email [email protected]

Please note that this event will be recorded by the ARDC but will not be published. ARDC respects the privacy of individuals. Information collected is in accordance with the ARDC Privacy Policy.