Gaia Protocol for science at scale
Funding Area: Critical shared infrastructure / Infraestructura compartida critica
Problem Statement: In an increasingly complex world, research and application increasingly require the aid of shared scientific models. But despite the advance of computational capability, data availability and algorithms, our tools and infrastructure are siloed, static and single-player: they can't cope with the scale, complexity and urgency of real-world problems. These limitations also make it harder to advance reproducibility, transparency and cross-disciplinary collaboration in science.
Proposed Activities: This grant will accelerate the ongoing design and development of the Gaia Protocol, an open science system allowing researchers to share, compare and integrate models faster, more reliably and based on first-principles frameworks of statistics and metascience. The same protocol opens the door for semi- or fully-automated scientific modeling. This includes a reference implementation in Python, the emerging standard for scientific computing, to be compatible with popular tools like IPython, Google Colab and PapersWithCode. With the grant's support, the protocol spec will be completed by end of 2023 and the reference implementation by mid-2024. Key activities include consultation with scientific and other stakeholders, protocol design, implementation, and communications. Project requires 1 computational statistics expert, 1 senior technical architect, 0.5 technical writer, 0.5 project manager.
Openness: The work is fully open: The protocol spec will be published under Creative Commons and the reference implementation will be made available on a public Git repository with an appropriate OSS license. As part of the protocol design, we have been engaging various sectors of the scientific community and civil society and intend to accelerate this even further. Finally, our interoperable design will ensure that everyone from the scientific community, regardless of level of expertise or resourcing, will be able to make use of the system.
Challenges: The key challenge we foresee is building critical mass for adoption of the protocol within each given research domain. To mitigate this, we are engaging with domain experts in several fields (to date: Earth sciences; agronomy, ecology and soil science; urban planning and built environment; public policy; and ocean sciences).
Neglectedness: Some funding for scientific modeling infrastructure public-goods exists, especially within NSF and Horizon Europe. Applying for such grants is a byzantine, expensive process that favors already well-funded organizations and academic institutions. We have had some prior success getting private funding from Filecoin Foundation, Gitcoin, Digital Gaia, Inc, TimeLike, Inc, and Open Earth Foundation. That funding supported the completion and open-source release of the precursor projects found at https://github.com/gaia-os.
Success: Number of scientific publications powered by the Gaia Protocol, in absolute numbers and as a percentage of total publication volume in each field. We would also like to prove that our protocol makes science better, by finding that publications powered by Gaia are indeed more replicable and that this leads to a higher impact score.
Total Budget: $25,000
Budget File: pdf
Affiliations: Buckminster Fuller Institute; Digital Gaia, Inc; TimeLike, Inc.
LMIE Carveout: A significant portion of our project's contributor community is based on LMIEs (notably Brazil, Colombia, Serbia). Additionally, the initial target domains benefited by the project involve advancing agricultural, urban and ocean sciences in LMIEs (notably, existing pilot projects in Brazil and Colombia)
Team Skills: We are a consortium between the Buckminster Fuller Institute (a 40-year-old nonprofit dedicated to design science) and two open-core technology startups (Digital Gaia and TimeLike). The leaders of these organizations (Stuart Cowan, Rafael Kaufmann, Stephen Coy and Ned Harvey) all have decades of experience at the intersection of science and decision-making, and have demonstrated the ability to design and build high-quality open-source software at this intersection. We have been quickly expanding our partnership scope to several other organizations that will help with domain expertise and in building critical mass for adoption.
How Did You Hear About This Call: Word of mouth (e.g. conversations and emails from IOI staff, friends, colleagues, etc.) / Boca a boca (por ejemplo, conversaciones y correos electrónicos del personal del IOI, amigos, colegas, etc.)
Submission Number: 34
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