The United States National Climate Assessment NCA Report Series, Volume 3 Knowledge Management Workshop, September 20-22, 2010

The National Climate Assessment (NCA), under the auspices of the United States Global Change Research Program (USGCRP), convened a workshop on “Knowledge Management, Data, and Review Strategies for the National Climate Assessment” from September 20 to 22, 2010. The workshop was held at the United States Geological Survey (USGS) headquarters in Reston, Virginia. The purpose of this workshop was to begin to identify approaches and methodologies for managing the large quantities of data that will be either developed or redeployed in the context of the Assessment, as well as ways of archiving and retrieving that information. In addition, issues related to transparency, quality assurance and documentation were addressed. The overall goal is to ensure the quality of data used for the NCA, and efficiently manage these data in a way that makes them as usable and accessible as possible. Attendance at the workshop was by invitation with a focus on government employees with experience in managing and deploying data (attendees are listed in Appendix B). Private and public sector representatives who had experience in addressing data issues associated with multiple previous national and international assessments were also invited to share their perspectives. One of the desired outcomes from the workshop was to initiate the development of a community of people who have interest and expertise in managing information and developing approaches to data management to be considered by the Federal Advisory Committee (FAC) for the Assessment. People who participated in the workshop did so as individuals with no intent to provide any specific recommendations or consensus-based guidance. This summary integrates the comments that were made by the invited presenters with the comments that arose in discussions associated with the presentations and in breakout sessions (see agenda, Appendix A).