Building an Ecosystem for Sustainable Urban Informatics: Open Science and Reproducibility

20 April 2026

The Urban Analytics Lab is a research group at the National University of Singapore with a holistic commitment to urban informatics: not just conducting analytical research but building an ecosystem that supports sustainable and human-centered development of the field and cross-pollination with other domains. This agenda includes foundational research such as advancing spatial data quality assessments, open data benchmarking, investigations on crowdsourcing, and advancing GeoAI methodologies alongside structural developments including tools, datasets, standards, and community initiatives. This presentation provided a high-level overview of the agenda illustrated through recent outputs: papers introducing novel applications of emerging data (such as street view imagery) and recent open-source software, open datasets, and community-building initiatives in journals and beyond. The presentation included reflections and lessons learned on fostering reproducibility and open science practices such as open data sharing.

Filip Biljecki is an Assistant Professor at NUS and the founder of the NUS Urban Analytics Lab, a research group distinguished by its commitment to open science through the release and maintenance of numerous open-source software packages and open data projects that are freely accessible to researchers and practitioners worldwide. He holds MSc and PhD degrees from the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. Advancing open and collaborative research practices, Filip serves the community as an associate editor for multiple journals in urban studies and contributes to open standards development through his involvement in the Open Geospatial Consortium. He is currently editing a special issue dedicated to open-source software in urban data science for a leading journal in his field, furthering the adoption of transparent and reproducible research methods.

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Data Rescue Efforts at a Defunded Data Repository

11 March 2026

This webinar, featuring Alex de Sherbinin, focused on data rescue efforts and other lessons learned in the wake of the contract termination of the NASA Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC), which was managed by Columbia University’s CIESIN since the late 1990s. It offers lessons for other data repositories and underscores the importance of solidarity in the data community in the face of shrinking resources and waning political support for data preservation.

Alex de Sherbinin served as a manager of the NASA SEDAC from 2006-2025. He was also a member then chair of the WDS Scientific Committee from 2015-2021, of which SEDAC was a regular member. Dr. de Sherbinin is a geographer whose research interests focus on the human aspects of global environmental change and geospatial data applications, integration, and dissemination.

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Persistent Identifiers: Enabling Trust & Discovery in Research Data (Asia-Oceania Session)

10 February 2026

The World Data System hosted a webinar featuring speakers from Research Organization Registry (ROR), DataCite, Korea Institute of Science and Technology Information (KISTI), and Worldwide Protein DataBank (wwPDB) to explore how persistent identifiers (PIDs) strengthen trust and facilitate discovery in research data.

To accommodate the global community, this event was held twice in different time zones. This session featured a use case from a valued WDS member, Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KISTI). This presentation covered benefits, challenges, solutions adopted, and lessons learned from implementing PIDs in their workflows.

View presentation slides here.

Persistent Identifiers: Enabling Trust & Discovery in Research Data (Europe-Americas Session)

10 February 2026

The World Data System hosted a webinar featuring speakers from Research Organization Registry (ROR), DataCite, Korea Institute of Science and Technology Information (KISTI), and Worldwide Protein DataBank (wwPDB) to explore how persistent identifiers (PIDs) strengthen trust and facilitate discovery in research data.

To accommodate the global community, this event was held twice in different time zones. This session featured a use case from WDS member Worldwide Protein DataBank (wwPDB), highlighting their experiences with PIDs for data discoverability and integrity.

View presentation slides here.

AI & ML in Polar Science: Challenges and Best Practices

17 September 2025

The webinar examined how Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) are being applied to address the challenges of rapid environmental and social change in the Arctic and Antarctic. Presenters—including Johnathan Kool (Australian Antarctic Data Centre), Munish Madan (Arctic Institute of North America), and Christy Caudill (Canadian Biogenome Project)—shared insights on optimizing metadata, evaluating the capabilities and limitations of AI/ML in polar research, and co-developing AI tools with Indigenous Data Sovereignty considerations.

The session highlighted practical strategies for integrating FAIR principles into research workflows, discussed ethical frameworks for collaboration with Indigenous communities, and addressed challenges such as algorithmic bias and intellectual property concerns, using real-world case studies to illustrate best practices.

View presentation slides here.