Job announcement: KM and data sharing coordinator for Climate Change CGIAR research program CCAFS

Knowledge and Data Sharing Coordinator: The International Center for Tropical Agriculture – CIAT, is one of the 15 not-for-profit Centers funded by various countries, private foundations, international and regional organizations that make up the CGIAR Consortium a global agriculture research partnership for a food secure future (www.cgiar.org);.

The CGIAR Research Program 7 (CRP7), Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS), is a strategic ten-year partnership emerging from new collaboration between CGIAR and the global environmental change community aimed at overcoming the additional threats posed by a changing climate to achieving food security, enhancing livelihoods and improving environmental management in the developing world. CCAFS brings together strategic research in agricultural science, development research, climate science, and Earth System science, to identify and address the most important interactions, synergies and tradeoffs between climate change, agriculture and food security.

As a collective effort coordinated by the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), CCAFS is becoming a hub that facilitates action across multiple CGIAR centers and other CGIAR Research Programs while involving farmers, policy makers, donors and other stakeholders, to integrate their knowledge and information needs into the tools and approaches that are being developed. For more information visit www.ccafs.cgiar.org

Integration for decision making, one of four CCAFS research themes, has a key role within the program. It is creating mechanisms to integrate the work conducted in the other themes (Adaptation to progressive climate change, Managing climate risk and Pro-poor mitigation) both at regional and global levels. One of its major research objectives includes assembling data and tools for analysis and planning. As part of its 2012 activities, Theme 4 is overseeing the development of CCAFS’ Data Management Strategy (DMS) which will provide an enabling environment where scientists and partners are able to produce, archive and share high quality data outputs as international public goods. The main goal of the DMS is to ensure that all the data and the relevant supporting documentation from the research activities undertaken in the program becomes publicly available to the global community. 

We are seeking applications for a qualified Knowledge and Data Sharing Coordinator, his/her role is to lead the implementation of the CCAFS data management strategy and liaise with the 15 centres and its scientists to coordinate the necessary processes aiming to increase the accessibility and visibility of the scientific outputs generated by the program and its partners globally.

He/she will be instrumental in achieving CCAFS’ goal of providing a “one-stop shop” for accessing and sharing the knowledge and data that will support collaborative efforts towards achieving system level outcomes on climate change, agriculture and food security.

Indeed, CCAFS research themes, associated CGIAR centres and partners are generating large amounts of data of many different types, including climate data, agricultural trial data, socio-economic data, interactive mapping applications, video testimonials, toolkits of adaptation and mitigation options, for example. These data are stored and/or hosted on several different platforms, the Adaptation and Mitigation Knowledge Network (www.amkn.org), the CCAFS climate portal (www.ccafs-climate.org/), the Agtrials portal (www.agtrials.org), a CCAFS Dataverse, and the CCAFS website (www.ccafs.cgiar.org).

CCAFS also has increasingly important links to other databases implemented by other initiatives, such as HarvestChoice (http://harvestchoice.org) and the Consortium for Spatial Information (http://geonetwork.csi.cgiar.org).