Foundations of Sustainability Science
A new way of doing Science in tune with our common future
The DATAPB and LMI IDEAL act by connecting data, projects, and people at the confluence of two paradigms: Sustainability and e-Science. Understanding how the complementarity between these paradigms can generate innovation is essential to reconcile human and economic development with the conservation of natural resources for future generations
"Currently, we have an unprecedented availability of information for the development of scientific applications in support of sustainability. The other side of the coin is that the socioeconomic and environmental challenges associated with global changes are also of great magnitude. It is urgent, therefore, to understand how new tools from Computer and Information Sciences allow us to make more effective use of big data for the construction of nature-based solutions to the socio-environmental crisis. This understanding of the interface between e-Science and Sustainability necessarily involves the Open Science movement."
Open Science
"Open Science is an articulated set of principles, practices, and actions that seek to make the scientific knowledge production process more transparent, accessible, and inclusive. Examples of this approach include initiatives to ensure free access to data and articles produced with public funding, democratization of access to technological and informational tools that allow for the reuse of large data sets (big data), and new forms of integrated teaching and governance that are linked to scientific production processes."
![](http://datapb.ccae.ufpb.br/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/cropped-AdobeStock_402911823-1.jpeg)
e-Science as cyberinfrastructure for Open Science-based communities: a look at DATAPB
The conceptual differentiation between e-Science and Open Science allows us to understand how technology and philosophy can work together to leverage ways of producing science that are more transparent, accessible, and inclusive. In general, we can say that e-Science refers to the construction of cyberinfrastructures through which the principles of Open Science can be realized. This cyberinfrastructure depends not only on technological tools, which are obviously essential, but also on institutional arrangements, collaborative networks, and structuring policies aligned with the development of Open Science-based communities..
In the context of research, development, and innovation in Brazilian territories subject to high degrees of environmental degradation and social vulnerability, supporting Open Science-based communities with a focus on sustainability projects is as challenging as it is necessary. Faced with this challenge of applying e-Science in comprehensive initiatives for territorial transformation towards sustainable bioeconomies, DATAPB and LMI IDEAL articulate different principles and actions of Open Science in their projects and tools.. The way by which we apply these principles for the development of a community of researchers, educators, managers, and community leaders working for sustainability from the perspective of Open Science can be summarized by the following points:
- transdisciplinary knowledge synthesis - here understood as the integration of concepts, theories, and methods from different scientific disciplines, articulated by informational synthesis emerging from the integration, interoperability, storage, processing, and analysis of large datasets, made widely accessible and associated with synthesis tools;
- the adaptive governance approach applying Science for territorial transformation -which assumes that applying scientific research to promoting sustainability requires mechanisms for social participation and learning, and also multi-institutional network strategies ,
- constructing innovative connections between cutting-edge research and basic education - based on the perception that building sustainability, ultimately, is a process of sociocultural transformation that critically depends on the formation of critical citizens who are able to process, synthesize, and interpret information.
![](http://datapb.ccae.ufpb.br/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/cropped-AdobeStock_477159361.jpeg)
+e-Science
Information Technology and the main
trends in Open Science
The big data era brings challenges and opportunities that need to be deeply understood in order for us to take advantage of an unprecedented amount of information to promote sustainability. Watch the talk by clicking on the red icon (in Portuguese).
LUIZ FERNANDO SAYÃO
Comissão Nacional de Energia Nuclear (CNEN)
e-Science: challenges and opportunities for the information scientist
Talk at the I Online Symposium on e-Science for Sustainability promoted by DATAPB in March, 2022.
pelo projeto DATAPB em Marco de 2022.