Harmonizing Stable Isotope Data in Australia: The isotopes.au Platform for Enhanced Data Sharing and Collaboration

Large volumes of isotope data have been collected across many scales and for a diverse range of purposes. From international and national scale monitoring and measurement efforts to short term assessments such as academic projects and citizen science efforts.  These all continue to contribute to creating significant data assets. Yet, the difficulty extracting and integrating these data resources into workflows limits the potential value.  Data collection, management and analysis efforts are siloed by funding models and contractual agreements, resulting in a fragmented data landscape.

In Australia, environmental isotope data in environmental media, such as water, soil, rocks, plants and animals, have been accumulated over many decades in public organisations including federal and state government agencies and universities. Federal science agencies are key custodians of such data and already disseminates data through established organizational channels, such as the CSIRO Data Access Portal (DAP) and Geoscience Australia's Portal Core. However there remains an ambiguity about an institutional mandate for collecting and disseminating data, leading to a lack of coordination and sharing.

We present the process of harmonizing publicly held stable isotope data from Australian public organisations into a coherent user experience. Data across multiple Australian organisations has been harmonised through an interoperable architecture and common ontology, co-developed with wide consultation across the stable isotope community in Australia. This includes implementing robust data collection strategies, ensuring data quality control, and transparent data stewardship governance.

Existing data silos of big data repositories were translated in an aligned manner through a flat ontology, so data can be gathered and reused across different isotopic data sources. This was done while maintaining FAIR standards and preserving the autonomy of source institutions' internal data structures and governance systems. The isotopes.au platform and ontology are presented as a bottom-up solution with an additive architecture to be flexible across multiple future applications.

The goals of this multi-institutional effort are to create greater usability and availability of publicly-held data, increase collaboration of research infrastructure, and realise greater value from public data.  This supports good outcomes for both private and public usage. The next step is to expand the network of connected data sources and facilitate development of modelling applications supported by isotopes.au.

By leveraging big data through platforms like isotopes.au and fostering international collaboration, Australia and Europe can work together to establish robust and efficient data sharing mechanisms