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Abstract Meeting the United Nation’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) calls for an integrative scientific approach, combining expertise, data, models and tools across many disciplines towards addressing sustainability challenges at various spatial and temporal scales. This holistic approach, while necessary, exacerbates the big data and computational challenges already faced by researchers. Many challenges in sustainability research can be tackled by harnessing the power of advanced cyberinfrastructure (CI). The objective of this paper is to highlight the key components and technologies of CI necessary for meeting the data and computational needs of the SDG research community. An overview of the CI ecosystem in the United States is provided with a specific focus on the investments made by academic institutions, government agencies and industry at national, regional, and local levels. Despite these investments, this paper identifies barriers to the adoption of CI in sustainability research that include, but are not limited to access to support structures; recruitment, retention and nurturing of an agile workforce; and lack of local infrastructure. Relevant CI components such as data, software, computational resources, and human-centered advances are discussed to explore how to resolve the barriers. The paper highlights multiple challenges in pursuing SDGs based on the outcomes of several expert meetings. These include multi-scale integration of data and domain-specific models, availability and usability of data, uncertainty quantification, mismatch between spatiotemporal scales at which decisions are made and the information generated from scientific analysis, and scientific reproducibility. We discuss ongoing and future research for bridging CI and SDGs to address these challenges.
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This content will become publicly available on January 6, 2026
Engaging the Earth Science and Engineering Communities in Developing A River Morphology Information System (RIMORPHIS)
ABSTRACT River morphology data are critical for understanding and studying river processes and for managing rivers for multiple socio‐economic uses. While such data have been extensively acquired, several issues hinder their use such as data accessibility, various data formats, lack of data models for storage, and lack of processing tools to assemble data in products readily usable for research, management, and education. A multi‐university research team has prototyped a web‐based river morphology information system (RIMORPHIS) for hosting and creating new information (e.g., terrain and material composition data) and data processing tools for the broader earth science communities. The RIMORPHIS design principles include: (i) broad access via a publicly and freely available platform‐independent system; (ii) flexibility in handling existing and future data types; (iii) user‐friendly and interactive interfaces; and (iv) interoperability and scalability to ensure platform sustainability. Developing such an ambitious community resource is only possible and impactful by continuously engaging stakeholders from the project inception. This paper highlights the research team's strategy and activities to engage with river morphology data producers and potential users from academia, research, and practice. The paper also details outcomes of stakeholder engagement and illustrates how these interactions are positively shaping RIMORPHIS development and its path to long‐term sustainability.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1948938
- PAR ID:
- 10573673
- Publisher / Repository:
- Wiley-Blackwell
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- JAWRA Journal of the American Water Resources Association
- Volume:
- 61
- Issue:
- 1
- ISSN:
- 1093-474X
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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