Key Tasks and Competences of Spatial Data Manager in Local Self-Government

The article addresses the spatial data manager domain in local self-government units. The scope of the article comprehends typical tasks and required competences for conducting the usual spatial data manager job tasks in local self-government. Furthermore, in the research described in the article, the tasks are systematized and mapped with required competences. Based on the research on tasks and required competences, two types of profiles of spatial data managers in local self-government with its specializations are proposed and described, which are recommended to be considered when developing both, occupation standard and qualification standard of spatial data managers.

Pioneering easy-to-use forestry data with Forest Explorer

Forest Explorer is a web tool that can be used to easily browse the contents of the Cross-Forest dataset, a Linked Open Data resource containing the forestry inventory and land cover map from Spain. The tool is purposed for domain experts and lay users to facilitate the exploration of forestry data. Since these two groups are not knowledgable on Semantic Web, the user interface is designed to hide the complexity of RDF, OWL or SPARQL. An interactive map is provided for this purpose, allowing users to navigate to the area of interest and presenting forestry data with different levels of detail according to the zoom level. Forest Explorer offers different filter controls and is localized to English and Spanish. All the data is retrieved from the Cross-Forest and DBpedia endpoints through the Data manager. This component feeds the different Feature managers with the data needed to be displayed in the map. The Data manager uses a reduced set of SPARQL templates to accommodate any data request of the Feature managers. Caching and smart geographic querying are employed to limit data exchanges with the endpoint. A live version of the tool is freely available for everybody that wants to try it – any device with a modern browser should be sufficient to test it. Since December 2019, more than 3,200 users have employed Forest Explorer and it has appeared 12 times in the Spanish media. Results from a user study with 28 participants (mainly domain experts) show that Forest Explorer can be used to easily navigate the contents of the Cross-Forest dataset. No important limitations were found, only feature requests such as the integration of new datasets from other countries that are part of our future work.

Expanding the Galaxy’s reference data

SummaryProperly and effectively managing reference datasets is an important task for many bioinformatics analyses. Refgenie is a reference asset management system that allows to easily organize, retrieve, and share such datasets. Here, we describe the integration of refgenie into the Galaxy platform. Server administrators are able to configure Galaxy to make use of reference datasets made available on a refgenie instance. Additionally, a Galaxy Data Manager tool has been developed to provide a graphical interface to refgenie’s remote reference retrieval functionality. A large collection of reference datasets has also been made available using the CVMFS repository from GalaxyProject.org, with mirrors across the United States, Canada, Europe, and Australia, enabling easy use outside of Galaxy.Availability and implementationThe ability of Galaxy to use refgenie assets was added to the core Galaxy framework in version 20.05, which is available from https://github.com/galaxyproject/galaxy under the Academic Free License version 3.0. The refgenie Data Manager tool can be installed via the Galaxy ToolShed, with source code managed at https://github.com/galaxyproject/tools-iuc/data_managers/data_manager_refgenie_pull and released using an MIT license.

The role of a data manager at a clinical trial center: the experience of the Alessandria hospital, Italy

Objectives: To define the Data Manager (DM) job description within the Clinical Trial Center (CTC) of the Alessandria Hospital (AO AL). To identify the number of authorized clinical studies after the implementation of three DMs in the CTC of the AO AL. Methods: The activities of the DM within the CTC of the AO AL take place in the activation, management and conclusion of clinical trials. The activities were monitored through specific indicators from June 01st, 2019 to May 31st, 2020. Results: During the reference period, an increased authorized studies were observed. Conclusion: The implementation of DMs in the CTC of AO AL has been demonstrated the importance of the figure itself, which, although it has not professionally recognized yet, is found to be fundamental in clinical research.