Monday, 13 April 2015

Get back to the community

 It is well known in the ANDS community that ANDS aims to make data reusable by more researchers more often. All projects funded under the ANDS applications program have demonstrated by making data available to researchers; by combing, cleaning and integrating data from a myriad of data sources, and by visualising data for easier exploration; researchers can do a range of things they could not do before or do their existing research in a more efficient way. An outcome of the application program is to advance in science and technology through sharing and reusing data.

Advance in research and science will consequently benefit to the society. Some contributions require more effort and thus benefit will be shown in a longer term. For example, the output from the Cancer Genomics Linkage Application, the Proteomic-Genomic Nexus, the Proteome Browser, the Xglom - Multimodal Kidney Image Analysis and TissueStack are contributing to internationally coordinated efforts in studying human genetics disease and finding treatments for patients who suffer from pancreatic cancer or  kidney disease. Advances in these fields will lead to improvement of our quality life. The projects Soils to Satellites, Ecosystem Production in Space and Time, Climate Change Adaptation Information Hub will contribute to the understanding of our environments, thus we can act accordingly to make our environment sustainable.

Some ANDS applications projects directly benefit a range of government agencies and the public in the short term. For example, the project Positive Places: spatial analysis of public open space  has created a first-of-its-kind, web-based geospatial tool.  The project director Fiona Bull commented that: The tool can be used by the general public to look up their nearest parks or check if the park they intend to go to has facilities like toilets and barbecues. More importantly it can be used by planners to ensure we preserve and optimise our green spaces.

ANDS Applications Project Blogs/Sites