Arctic Data Collaborative (ARDAC)

About ARDAC

The Arctic Data Collaborative aims to house authoritative and definitive versions of Arctic datasets in order to build research capacity and inform decisions that matter to local, state, and federal stakeholders.

As part of the University of Alaska Fairbanks, ARDAC will strengthen the University and its associated researchers, institutions, projects, and students by combining high-quality, curated data sets with analysis tools to link the data directly to end user needs.

ARDAC data

ARDAC goes far beyond an Arctic data archive or warehouse. We do not house raw model outputs or raw datasets. ARDAC provides value-added data and visualizations for our unique Arctic landscape:

• Thorough metadata for all datasets
• Validation and cleaning of data to remove anomalous values
• Data is packaged to make it spatially and temporally useful
• Tools for in-browser access, analysis, and visualization of data

The team behind ARDAC

As the pool of data within ARDAC grows, the skill and experience of the team in building powerful web tools for exploring complex data will be a significant asset. They have experience with a range of mechanisms for data exploration and understanding, and have worked with a variety of partners to build tools that reflect the nature of the data and the needs of our users.

We are also interested in developing decision support systems within ARDAC that put the data within the collaborative to work, particularly to replace outdated or discontinued decision support systems that cease to function well for Alaska and Arctic decision-makers.​

Where we’re going

• New data and data access tools are being added regularly. We’re partnering with scientists to add key Arctic datasets to ARDAC and make them even more applicable and useful to new audiences.
• We’re creating APIs that let users access subsets of data for use in their own applications.
• We’re building innovative decision support systems to serve specific professional fields, including engineering, climate science and forecasting, and planning fields.