In 2015, a Sloan Foundation grant to Open Knowledge led to the creation of the “frictionless data” standard, a set of protocols for packaging tabular datasets in uniform ways that could be used, if adopted widely enough, to greatly simply the logistics of exporting, transporting, and importing data. This grant funds efforts by Open Knowledge to broaden adoption of the frictionless data standard through outreach to scholarly organizations, data platforms, analysis tools, and specific research fields. Over the three-year grant period, Open Knowledge will use grant funds to conduct outreach and support activities, structured partly as high-touch field/context-specific pilots, and partly as broader outreach and engagement to the wider user community.

Major video game rendering engines are capable of rich 3D environmental rendering and physics simulation, not to mention built-in virtual and augmented reality capabilities. They are, however, rarely utilized in scholarly research, in part because researchers who have explored their use for data visualization have had to manage the arduous task of configuring and structuring their research data in order to load it into the game engine. This grant funds a two-year initiative by Huy Vo of the City College of New York to dramatically lower barriers to the use of game engines for scientific visualization. In the first year, Vo will develop a standardized workflow and open source plug-in for the popular Unity 3D gaming engine that will enable the easy importation of research data, generation of geometries, and construction of interactive visualizations. In year two, Vo will pilot the plug-in himself in two research collaborations (one with CUNY researchers on climate adaptation and the reliability of power sector infrastructure, one with AT&T Research Labs on mobile antenna placement). He will also use it as the platform for student projects in a CUNY data visualization course.