Conference Agenda

NFDI4Earth (www.nfdi4earth.de) is intended as the consortium of the the German NFDI (National Research Data Infrastructure) to address the digital needs of researchers in Earth System Sciences (ESS). The NFDI4Earth consortium has been created in a bottom-up process and comprises currently 55 members from German universities, research institutions, infrastructure providers, public authorities and different research organizations.

A multitude of observations and model data in very high spatial, temporal and thematic resolutions lead to rapidly increasing data volumes. Thus, describing and assessing Earth System processes, their dependencies, and their changes urgently require efficient workflows and extremely powerful data analytics frameworks. Today, various services to support RDM in ESS exist. A community process to screen the landscape of existing infrastructures, services and collaboration tools supporting ESS resulted in a list of more than 100 platforms and tools. However, they are scattered and heterogeneous as well as mostly project based. Consequently, they are lacking long-term perspectives. The below listed measures and services do therefore target the provision of sustainable and coherent solutions that are findable via a one-stop framework, provision of common data analytics frameworks (e.g. 4D Data Cubes) and a one community approach to Openness, FAIRness and sustainable RDM in ESS.

In a user-driven process NFDI4Earth will provide researchers with FAIR, easy, coherent, efficient, open, and – whenever possible – unrestricted access to all relevant Earth System data, scientific data management tools and data analysis services. The design and implementation of the NFDI4Earth will follow a progressive and iterative process. Here, we list measures and services that are core to NFDI4Earth:

• ESS Pilots to engage the NFDI4Earth community. Pilots will stem from different ESS domains, indicating the researchers’ needs and are the community’s contribution to an agile development of NFDI4Earth.
• Services are offered via a one-stop frontend and include a support structure that provides an easy route for all ESS researchers to access research data as well as analytical and computing environments. In addition, researchers will receive support for data integration, to publish data and software according to agreed openness and quality criteria, and in archiving and preserving research data.
• Requirements driven technology design – keeping the users and providers of ESS research data and software connected and in continuous open dialogue.
• Education and Training for ESS research data management and ESS data science
• Services supporting the exploitation of new technologies and that (help to) create next generation solutions for research data management and research data analytics for ESS.
• Services to support the establishment of common agreements and regulations for ESS researchers and infrastructure providers towards FAIR and open research data and software management.
• Measures to fully link and embed NFDI4Earth services and achievements into national and international developments.

The digital transformation has changed scientific work due to new, and in many cases also more complex, tasks – and it will continue to have a large impact in the future. The demand for specialised knowledge in the handling of digital methods and artefacts is growing rapidly, with the digital transformation in science meeting relatively static institutional constraints. This applies not only to competencies, but also to organisational models and even to institutional innovations. Human resources departments and the “configuration” of the scientific system must take into account the increasing amount of networking, collaboration, and “interdisciplinary” communication pressure as well as the “scientification” of research-related infrastructure tasks. It is also necessary to strengthen the infrastructure-related competencies of researchers in light of the rapidly growing digitality of research. The strategic question of job profiles – not solely considered from the perspective of the general labour market, but in terms of the needs of science itself – also has to be addressed. In other words: A structural transformation is taking place, and the challenge for science is now to react specifically as a united system – beyond simply meeting “qualification needs.”

The contribution will present recommendations regarding the strategic management of the staffing situation in publicly funded research and research infrastructures, developed by the German Council for Scientific Information Infrastructures (RfII). It will provide impulses to scientists in charge of running departments, large projects or infrastructures.

The Multi-scale Laboratories (MSL) represent a community of European solid Earth sciences laboratories and form one of the Thematic Cores Services (TCS) of the European Plate Observing System (EPOS), an ESFRI Landmark and European Research Infrastructure Consortium (ERIC). The diversity of experimental and analytical methods employed in such infrastructures reflects the multi-scale nature of the Earth system and is essential for the understanding of its evolution, for the assessment of geo-hazards, and for the sustainable exploitation of geo-resources.

The TCS MSL is committed to make Earth science laboratory data FAIR: Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable. For this purpose, the TCS MSL has developed an online portal that brings together DOI-referenced data publications from research data repositories related to the TCS MSL context (https://epos-msl.uu.nl/).

In addition, the TCS MSL has developed a Trans-national access (TNA) program that allows researchers and research teams to apply for physical or remote access to the participating EPOS MSL laboratories. Access is currently supported by national funding or in-kind contribution. Based on the EPOS Data policy & TNA General Principles (https://gnss-metadata.eu/Guidelines/EPOS-Data_Policy.pdf), access is regulated by common rules and a transparent policy, including procedures and mechanisms for application, negotiation, proposal evaluation, user feedback, use of laboratory facilities and data curation.

Access to EPOS Multi-scale laboratories is a unique opportunity to create new synergy, collaboration and innovation, in a framework of trans-national access rules. Unaffiliated European solid Earth sciences laboratories are welcome and encouraged to join the growing TCS MSL community.

In Europe there is a considerable amount of geoscientific information of great value to scientists, technicians and to society in general. Discover and access the available information is sometimes not easy due to different reasons: the language of the user and the information are not the same, the disparity of access points, etc.

In the framework of the GeoERA GIP-P project, a new search system is being developed in order to facilitate the discovery and access to geoscientific information available in Europe. This system offers the user the possibility to discover available information even if the search text entered by the user and the data or metadata do not match, but are semantically close. The search form offers different query possibilities: free text search, spatial selection, filtering by topic category, etc.

For each of the results listed, the system offers all the online access to the dataset: existing web applications to facilitate concrete thematic capabilities to query, display and analyse the dataset; URLs to access the dataset in certain formats (e.g. CSV, SHP); services to display or query the dataset (e.g. WMS, WFS); metadata details (e.g. ISO 19115).

In addition to display a ranked list of results that meet the query specified by the user, one of the most important features of the system is that, using the search criteria, it searches inside datasets to get and display records from databases, documents in a document repository o concepts from a project vocabularies, etc.

During the current energy transition, understanding our deep subsurface appears more important than ever. Traditional energy resources such as oil and gas might remain dominant in coming years but are also becoming more controversial and more difficult to exploit. With the rising trend of geothermal energy, our geological resources remain pivotal in supplying tomorrows clean energy. With a treasure of subsurface data being gathered in past generations, good access to this data is crucial. However, for many people, including geoscientists, it is not well known what subsurface data is publicly accessible. Moreover, as geology does not stop at boundaries and studies might want to include cross border data, understanding what information is available transnationally is valuable. For this, a full assessment of data access arrangements in several Western European countries (Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Denmark, Norway and United Kingdom) managing deep subsurface data has been made. Deep subsurface data starting at a depth of 500m mainly includes information about boreholes and seismic surveys. A wide variety of data types and formats exist each having their specific application. A lot of differences in the amount and quality of data publicly available does occur for example as a result of the varying laws and rules in the countries studied. Moreover, within one country different rules can apply because of regionally different jurisdiction. Also, the local presence of an oil and gas industry had a large impact on the amount, quality and access rules of data. Best practices identified in this study include complete and free data obtainability in easy and user-friendly geoportals. Significant data access improvement can be achieved by most of the countries studied by adopting these best practices. Improved collaboration amongst (EU) countries in the area of geosciences will lead to better subsurface data access, not only for transnational studies but also for national studies.

StraboSpot is a geologic data system that is designed to allow researchers to digitally collect, store, and share both field and laboratory data (Walker, J.D., et al., 2019, StraboSpot data system for Structural Geology, Geosphere). It was designed originally for structural geology data, but has been extended to field-based sedimentology and petrology, experimental deformation, and microanalysis. The data system uses two main concepts - spots and tags - to organize data. A spot characterizes a specific area at any spatial scale of observation. Spots are related in a purely spatial manner, and consequently, one spot can enclose multiple other spots that themselves contain spots. Spatial data can thus be tracked from scales of 100’s of km (regional) to several nanometers (microscopic). Tags provide conceptual grouping of spots, allowing linkages between spots independent of their spatial position.

We will highlight the current development of the microstructural component of StraboSpot for the desktop environment. The vocabulary underlying this system was developed with participation from EPOS. The use of spatially nested spots and conceptual grouping by tags works identically to the field-based application. Micrograph images obtained through different instruments may be stored, retaining spatial relations between images, along with associated data. The micrograph application will be interoperable with field data, as well as with experimental rock deformation data, providing geologic context for all samples. We will incorporate other communities that participate in microstructural analysis (igneous, metamorphic, and sedimentary petrology), after we complete a working version for the structural geology community.

A web-based map viewer is developed within the European Horizon 2020 project MEET and intended as a one-stop solution to cater to the wide spectrum of stakeholders that are interested in deep geothermal exploration and project development. The webtool will support future users in the geothermal community to access geospatial data at European scale and to be able to identify and find existing geodata at national or smaller scales. At the culmination of the MEET project, the outcome of investigations at local scale (demo sites and analogue sites) will be transferred and upscaled to other potential regions all over Europe.

The incorporated information ranges widely from traditional geological data to the information on the key players in geothermal sector. This webtool utilizes Opensource software like OpenLayers, PostGIS and GeoServer to produce the interactive data visualization. The data is grouped into different categories like geology, land and soil, environment, general information, powerplants etc. but can be effectively brought together by switching on multiple map layers and adjusting their transparency. We have aimed to fruitfully utilize the capabilities of Open Data while ensuring the trustworthiness by properly attributing the data sources.

We aim to combine this webtool with a decision-making tool which is another outcome of the MEET project. These, together with a parameter catalogue designed to offer more details about the various geothermal parameters would serve as a guiding trio for anyone who plans to deeply understand the landscape of geothermal energy sector in Europe.

Space-borne Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) Interferometry (InSAR) is now a key geophysical tool for surface deformation studies. The European Commission’s Sentinel-1 Constellation began acquiring data systematically in late 2014. The data, which are free and open access, have global coverage at moderate resolution with a 6 or 12-day revisit, enabling researchers to investigate large-scale surface deformation systematically through time. However, full exploitation of the potential of Sentinel-1 requires specific processing approaches as well as the efficient use of modern computing and data storage facilities. Here we present Looking Into Continents from Space with Synthetic Aperture Radar (LiCSAR), an operational system built for large-scale interferometric processing of Sentinel-1 data. LiCSAR is designed to automatically produce geocoded wrapped and unwrapped interferograms and coherence estimates, for large regions, at 0.001° resolution (WGS-84 coordinate system). The products are continuously updated in a frequency depending on prioritised regions (monthly, weekly or live update strategy in case of LiCSAR Earthquake Data Provider). We prioritise Alpine-Himalayan Belt and regions with seismic and volcanic activity, globally. The products are open and freely accessible and downloadable through an online portal. We describe the algorithms, processing (including our open-source LiCSBAS time series tool), and storage solutions implemented in LiCSAR, and show several case studies that use LiCSAR products to measure tectonic and volcanic deformation. We aim to accelerate the uptake of InSAR data by researchers as well as non-expert users by mass producing interferograms and derived products and disseminating them within existing metadata systems (e.g. EPOS).