Data Integration

SKOPE demands an ability to integrate data from diverse sources.  Two sorts of data integration are needed:

  1. The ability to integrate multiple sources of the same type of data into a unified dataset.  A key challenge here is to align the data recording schemes so the multiple datasets can reasonably be combined for analysis.
  2. The ability to combine information provided by different sorts of data to produce scientifically useful conclusions.  Here, key challenges are to provide provenance for the conclusions offered and to provide alternative reconstructions with reliability assessments.

A productive approach to the first type of data integration has been pioneered by the Digital Archaeological Record, a digital repository of archaeological data.  We expect to generalize that work for wider application.  Our previous work on the topic has been supported by grants from the National Science Foundation (BCS 1153115, IIS 1016921, IIS‑0624341, SES-0433959) and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.