Data Sharing
**What is it?
Data sharing, simply, is making data available to another party. This could include sharing with a partnering environmental non-profit, a researcher at a university, a community group, or a government agency.
Examples of environmental data sharing include:
- A community-based organization in California collects data on contaminants in a local lake and shares that data with a researcher. The researcher could then use the data to support research on the health effects of local pollution.
- A community-based organization in Texas collects air quality information using handheld monitors in communities that are near industrial areas. They can decide to share this data with the local public health agency in order to develop a warning system, or with a local city council to advocate for stricter regulation.
Real success stories that involve data sharing and collaboration include:
- Refining Relationships: How an Unlikely Community–Scientist Partnership Led to a Historic Environmental Justice Victory
- Overlooked Emissions in California’s Salton Sea Air Basin
Why does it matter?
Sharing data enables communities that have environmental data to build partnerships, inform their neighbors and region, and analyze information and impact over time.
While there are benefits to sharing, there are also risks: environmental data can be used by bad actors to misrepresent, draw inappropriate conclusions about, or otherwise harm communities. Concerns include: surveillance from mobile sensors, extractive research practices, or selectively slicing data for misrepresentation in media. Fortunately, there are tools to create safeguards when sharing data, including licenses, data sharing agreements, and various data governance models that can protect environmental data while ensuring its value can be used for and by the community.
For a more detailed exploration of how to consider data sharing with your team, see our zine: Zine - The Data We Own: A How-To Guide for Environmental Data Sharing.
Mentioned and additional resources:
- For an in-depth review of how data sharing involves responsibility sharing, see Data sharing and community-engaged research from Science.
- For a detailed account of how the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has structured data sharing within a community context, see Data Sharing in the Context of Community-Engaged Research Partnerships.
- For an overview of data sharing, licenses, and agreements, see this white paper on Data Sharing, Licenses, and Agreements from A Better Deal for Data.