A proposal for a thesaurus for web services in solar radiation

International audienceMetadata are necessary to discover, describe and exchange any type of information, resource and service at a large scale. A significant amount of effort has been made in the field of geography and environment to establish standards. Efforts still remain to address more specific domains such as renewable energies. This communication focuses on solar energy and more specifically on aspects in solar radiation that relate to geography and meteorology. A thesaurus in solar radiation is proposed for the keys elements in solar radiation namely time, space and radiation types. The importance of time-series in solar radiation is outlined and attributes of the key elements are discussed. An XML schema for encoding metadata is proposed. The exploitation of such a schema in web services is discussed. This proposal is a first attempt at establishing a thesaurus for describing data and applications in solar radiation

Benefits and limits of OGC-Web Services to the new SoDa Service on Solar Energy

International audienceThe SoDa Service (website: www.soda-is.com) is providing an easy and standardized access to valuable information related to solar energy for professionals. Several providers offer via the SoDa Service an access to for-free and for-pay Web services and off-line services delivering data on solar radiation, atmospheric optics, position of the sun and many others. Since the launch of the Service in 2003, the SoDa team is making efforts to improve the quality of the service to customers. After the duplication of the whole system in 2010 for a better reliability, and the development of a more esthetic website in summer 2012, the team is now populating the new SoDa Service with new Web ser-vices. This is a perfect opportunity to explore different standards in order to increase the dissemination and accepta-tion of the existing and new services by the community of users. After several trials, the Open Geospatial Consorti-um (OGC) standards were selected. This communication discusses the OGC-compliant Web services and how the decision for developments within the new SoDa website was taken

User's Guide to the SoDa and SOLEMI Services

The European Earth observation programme GMES (Global Monitoring for Environment and Security) aims at providing environmental information to support policymakers, public authorities and both public and commercial users. A systematic monitoring and forecasting of the state of the Earth's subsystems is currently under development. Six thematic areas are developed: marine, land, atmosphere, emergency, security and climate change. A land monitoring service, a marine monitoring service and an atmosphere monitoring service will contribute directly to the monitoring of climate change and to the assessment of mitigation and adaptation policies. Additional GMES services will address respectively emergency response and security-related aspects. The pre-operational atmosphere service of GMES is currently provided through the FP7 project MACC (Monitoring Atmospheric Composition and Climate). MACC combines state-of-the-art atmospheric modelling with Earth observation data to provide information services covering European Air Quality, Global Atmospheric Composition, Climate, and UV and Solar Energy. Within the radiation subproject (MACC-RAD) existing historical and daily updated databases for monitoring incoming surface solar irradiance are further developed. The service will meet the needs of European and national policy development and the requirements of (commercial) downstream services (e.g. planning, monitoring, efficiency improvements, integration into energy supply grids). The SOLEMI service (operated by MACC partner DLR) and the SoDa service (operated by MACC partner ARMINES and its subsidiary Transvalor) have been specifically developed in several national, European and ESA projects to fulfil the requirements for long-term databases and NRT services. On its transition process from the precursor services SoDa and SOLEMI the following User's Guide intends to summarize existing knowledge, which has been published only in a scattered manner. Part A 'Users' Expectations' describes the communities of users, their expectations and gives an overview of the compliance of the MACC RAD service with those. In Part B 'Creating Databases', the current databases HelioClim and SOLEMI as well as the methods used to convert satellite images into solar surface irradiance are presented. The quality of the retrieved irradiances is discussed. An overview of the operations and workflow is presented for the creation, updating and monitoring of these databases. Part C 'Delivering products' is devoted to the supply of products. The core products are defined. The future MACC-RAD Service is described and a prototype is presented. It is intended to update this User's Guide regularly following the realisation of the MACC RAD service line

User's Guide to the MACC-RAD Services on solar energy radiation resources

The European Earth observation programme GMES (Global Monitoring for Environment and Security), now Copernicus (the European Earth Observation Programme) since December 2012, aims at providing environmental information to support policymakers, public authorities and both public and commercial users. A systematic monitoring and forecasting of the state of the Earth's subsystems is currently under development. Six thematic areas are developed: marine, land, atmosphere, emergency, security and climate change. A land monitoring service, a marine monitoring service and an atmosphere monitoring service will contribute directly to the monitoring of climate change and to the assessment of mitigation and adaptation policies. Additional GMES services will address respectively emergency response and security-related aspects. The pre-operational atmosphere service of GMES is currently provided through the FP7 projects MACC and MACC-II (Monitoring Atmospheric Composition and Climate). MACC combines state-of-the-art atmospheric modelling with Earth observation data to provide information services covering European Air Quality, Global Atmospheric Composition, Climate, and UV and Solar Energy. Within the radiation subproject (MACC-RAD) existing historical and daily updated databases for monitoring incoming surface solar irradiance are further developed. The service will meet the needs of European and national policy development and the requirements of (commercial) downstream services (e.g. planning, monitoring, efficiency improvements, integration into energy supply grids). The SOLEMI and the HelioClim 3 databases operated by respectively DLR and ARMINES and its subsidiary Transvalor have been specifically developed in several national, European and ESA projects to fulfil the requirements for long-term databases and NRT services. On its transition process from the precursor services HelioClim and SOLEMI the following User's Guide intends to summarize existing knowledge, which has been published only in a scattered manner. Part A 'Users' Expectations' describes the communities of users, their expectations and gives an overview of the compliance of the MACC RAD service with those. In Part B 'The legacy HelioClim 3 and SOLEMI databases', the current databases HelioClim 3 and SOLEMI as well as the methods used to convert satellite images into solar surface irradiance are presented. The quality of the retrieved irradiances is discussed. An overview of the operations and workflow is presented for the creation, updating and monitoring of these databases. Part C 'The new HelioClim 4 database' describes the new Heliosat 4 method and the new HelioClim 4 database and provides an overview of the operations and the workflow. Part D 'Quality control of estimates of irradiance' discusses the means to control the quality of the elaboration of the products and to assess the uncertainty of the estimates of irradiance. Part E 'Delivering products' is devoted to the supply of HelioClim 4 products. The products are defined. A prototype of a means to access the HelioClim 4 products is presented. It is intended to update this User's Guide regularly following the realisation of the MACC RAD service line

A Proposal for a Thesaurus for Web Services in Solar Radiation

Metadata are necessary to discover, describe and exchange any type of information, resource and service at a large scale. A significant amount of effort has been made in the field of geography and environment to establish standards. Efforts still remain to address more specific domains such as renewable energies. This communication focuses on solar energy and more specifically on aspects in solar radiation that relate to geography and meteorology. A thesaurus in solar radiation is proposed for the keys elements in solar radiation namely time, space and radiation types. The importance of time-series in solar radiation is outlined and attributes of the key elements are discussed. An XML schema for encoding metadata is proposed. The exploitation of such a schema in web services is discussed. This proposal is a first attempt at establishing a thesaurus for describing data and applications in solar radiation