Paper short abstract:

We compare three cases in which people are engaged in efforts to reduce and/or maintain “friction” in the movement of meteorological data between different sites, and explore the role of data friction in the emerging power dynamics of meteorological data infrastructures.

Paper long abstract:

Whilst data can be mobile between different sites of data generation, processing and use, they do not often 'flow' easily. As data move they experience "friction" (Edwards, 2010) which slows down or blocks their movement. These frictions are significant to the ways in which data and their complex socio-material contexts are co-constituted. It is therefore important to observe sites of potential, blocked and lack of movement, and think critically about the unseen "conflicts, disagreements, inexact or unruly processes" (Edwards et al, 2011) shaping data movements in a seemingly harmonious aggregated data infrastructure.

Through development of the "data journeys" methodology, we identified sites within the UK's meteorological data infrastructure where people are working to reduce and/or maintain data "friction" for different ends. Here, we discuss findings from three such sites. Firstly, the struggles of archivists, climate scientists and citizen scientists working on the Old Weather Project to recover 'lost' data from the logs of historical ships and move them into the ICOADS dataset. Secondly, policy developments aimed at "opening" meteorological data for commercial re-use to spur innovation in the weather derivatives industry. Thirdly, the maintenance of "data friction" through the commercialisation of data in an effort to sustain the physical infrastructure of Sheffield Weston Park weather station - one of the oldest stations in the UK - in the context of deep public spending cuts. The paper contributes to understanding about how power dynamics shape the movement of data through knowledge infrastructures, and demonstrates a new methodology for capturing such insight.