The Knowledge Centre

The SIOS Knowledge Centre (SIOS-KC) is the central hub of SIOS. It is located in the Svalbard Science Centre in Longyearbyen and offers coordinated services for the international research community. The SIOS-KC currently has six staff members and is funded by the Research Council of Norway through 2026. The activities are based on three pillars, project management and communication, joint activities, and services.

SIOS-KC aims to provide an intellectual environment where sampling strategies and observational practices are developed. It also stimulates the development of new observational techniques for environmental monitoring that are clean, energy-efficient and robust in the Arctic environment.

Joint activities

Capacity building - activities to enhance and facilitate sharing of knowledge, technologies, expertise, and experiences. Examples are the annual Polar Night Week, scientific workshops, webinars and training courses.

Optimisation of the observing system - joint endeavour to develop the observing system in a sustainable manner and to decrease the environmental footprint of science. The major tool is the annual State of Environmental Science in Svalbard report, the Core Data Programme, and the Infrastructure Optimisation Reports.

SIOS services

All services offered by the SIOS community are coordinated by SIOS-KC with support from the SIOS working groups.

Access programme and logistical services - coordinated access to the various scientific facilities and equipment owned by SIOS members. SIOS also offers and coordinates logistical support.

Remote sensing services - single-point of contact for ground-, airborne-, and satellite-borne information for Svalbard.

Data management services - a unified interface to data that are produced using SIOS related infrastructure and third-party datasets that are of relevance to the SIOS scientific community.

 

 

 

Figure: The Knowledge Centre is the node of SIOS. Here the project management and communication takes place. It also coordinates joint activities and services provided by the SIOS community to its members as well as to other networks such as the circum-Arctic SAON, stakeholders and users outside the SIOS consortium. Working groups and committees develop the services with contributions from the member institutions. In addition, task forces may be formed in order to take on specific assignments. The task forces are used in a dynamic way as the need arises, and may include non-SIOS experts, e.g. commercial companies (e.g. innovation tasks) or members of other earth system networks (e.g. observing system optimisation). The editorial board of the State of Environmental Science in Svalbard (SESS) report is a special task force that is re-established for each issue of the SESS report.