The METAFOR project: preserving data through metadata standards for climate models and simulations

Climate modeling is a complex process, requiring accurate and complete metadata in order to identify, assess and use climate data stored in digital repositories. The preservation of such data is increasingly important given the development of ever-increasingly complex models to predict the effects of global climate change. The EU METAFOR project has developed a Common Information Model (CIM) to describe climate data and the models and modelling environments that produce this data. There is a wide degree of variability between different climate models and modelling groups. To accommodate this, the CIM has been designed to be highly generic and flexible, with extensibility built in. METAFOR describes the climate modelling process simply as "an activity undertaken using software on computers to produce data." This process has been described as separate UML packages (and, ultimately, XML schemas). This fairly generic structure canbe paired with more specific "controlled vocabularies" in order to restrict the range of valid CIM instances. The CIM will aid digital preservation of climate models as it will provide an accepted standard structure for the model metadata. Tools to write and manage CIM instances, and to allow convenient and powerful searches of CIM databases,. Are also under development. Community buy-in of the CIM has been achieved through a continual process of consultation with the climate modelling community, and through the METAFOR team’s development of a questionnaire that will be used to collect the metadata for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) model runs

Models, Metadata and Metafor

International audienceThe EU project Metafor (Metadata For Climate Modelling Digital Repositories) is developing a common information structure for describing complex climate models, their runtime technical and scientific context, and their data outputs. It is also building tools to help create, discover, view and manipulate the resulting metadata, helping scientists to make the most out of the huge volume of climate model data routinely produced. The project will leave a legacy of services deployed to maintain the infrastructure developed within the project. This presentation will introduce the main concepts defined by model metadata within Metafor (aka the Common Information Model or CIM), and how the CIM is building on other metadata initiatives both in Europe and worldwide - ranging from the exploitation of ISO standards, to support for the European spatial data infrastructure (INSPIRE) and the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS). It will also outline how Metafor is contributing to the metadata requirements and collection of the forthcoming fifth Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5) led by the World CLimate Research Programme (WCRP) in support of the next IPCC assessment

Models, Metadata and Metafor

International audienceThe EU project Metafor (Metadata For Climate Modelling Digital Repositories) is developing a common information structure for describing complex climate models, their runtime technical and scientific context, and their data outputs. It is also building tools to help create, discover, view and manipulate the resulting metadata, helping scientists to make the most out of the huge volume of climate model data routinely produced. The project will leave a legacy of services deployed to maintain the infrastructure developed within the project. This presentation will introduce the main concepts defined by model metadata within Metafor (aka the Common Information Model or CIM), and how the CIM is building on other metadata initiatives both in Europe and worldwide - ranging from the exploitation of ISO standards, to support for the European spatial data infrastructure (INSPIRE) and the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS). It will also outline how Metafor is contributing to the metadata requirements and collection of the forthcoming fifth Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5) led by the World CLimate Research Programme (WCRP) in support of the next IPCC assessment

Models, Metadata and Metafor

International audienceThe EU project Metafor (Metadata For Climate Modelling Digital Repositories) is developing a common information structure for describing complex climate models, their runtime technical and scientific context, and their data outputs. It is also building tools to help create, discover, view and manipulate the resulting metadata, helping scientists to make the most out of the huge volume of climate model data routinely produced. The project will leave a legacy of services deployed to maintain the infrastructure developed within the project. This presentation will introduce the main concepts defined by model metadata within Metafor (aka the Common Information Model or CIM), and how the CIM is building on other metadata initiatives both in Europe and worldwide - ranging from the exploitation of ISO standards, to support for the European spatial data infrastructure (INSPIRE) and the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS). It will also outline how Metafor is contributing to the metadata requirements and collection of the forthcoming fifth Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5) led by the World CLimate Research Programme (WCRP) in support of the next IPCC assessment

Models, Metadata and Metafor

International audienceThe EU project Metafor (Metadata For Climate Modelling Digital Repositories) is developing a common information structure for describing complex climate models, their runtime technical and scientific context, and their data outputs. It is also building tools to help create, discover, view and manipulate the resulting metadata, helping scientists to make the most out of the huge volume of climate model data routinely produced. The project will leave a legacy of services deployed to maintain the infrastructure developed within the project. This presentation will introduce the main concepts defined by model metadata within Metafor (aka the Common Information Model or CIM), and how the CIM is building on other metadata initiatives both in Europe and worldwide - ranging from the exploitation of ISO standards, to support for the European spatial data infrastructure (INSPIRE) and the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS). It will also outline how Metafor is contributing to the metadata requirements and collection of the forthcoming fifth Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5) led by the World CLimate Research Programme (WCRP) in support of the next IPCC assessment

Developing a Common Information Model for climate models and data

International audienceThe Metafor project, funded under the EU Framework Programme 7, proposes a Common Information Model (CIM) to describe in a standard way climate data and the models and modelling environments that produced this data. To establish the CIM, Metafor first considered the metadata models developed by other groups engaged in similar efforts in Europe and worlwide, such as the US Earth System Curator, explored fragmentation and gaps as well as duplication of information present in these metadata models, and reviewed current problems in identifying, accessing or using climate data present in existing repositories. Based on this analysis and on different use cases, the first version of the CIM is composed of 5 packages. The "data" package is used to describe the data objects that can be collected and stored in any number of ways; the "activity" package details the simulations and experiments and related requirements that were performed with numerical (possibly coupled) models described with the "software" packages. Both data and models can be associated with numerical grids represented by the "grid" package and finally the "shared" package gathers concepts shared among the other packages. The CIM is defined and implemented in the Unified Modelling Language (UML) and application schema have been generated in XML schema. Aiming at a wide adoption of the CIM, Metafor will optimize the way climate data infrastructures are used to store knowledge, thereby adding value to primary research data and information, and providing an essential asset for the numerous stakeholders actively engaged in climate change issues (policy, research, impacts, mitigation, private sector)

Developing a Common Information Model for climate models and data

International audienceThe Metafor project, funded under the EU Framework Programme 7, proposes a Common Information Model (CIM) to describe in a standard way climate data and the models and modelling environments that produced this data. To establish the CIM, Metafor first considered the metadata models developed by other groups engaged in similar efforts in Europe and worlwide, such as the US Earth System Curator, explored fragmentation and gaps as well as duplication of information present in these metadata models, and reviewed current problems in identifying, accessing or using climate data present in existing repositories. Based on this analysis and on different use cases, the first version of the CIM is composed of 5 packages. The "data" package is used to describe the data objects that can be collected and stored in any number of ways; the "activity" package details the simulations and experiments and related requirements that were performed with numerical (possibly coupled) models described with the "software" packages. Both data and models can be associated with numerical grids represented by the "grid" package and finally the "shared" package gathers concepts shared among the other packages. The CIM is defined and implemented in the Unified Modelling Language (UML) and application schema have been generated in XML schema. Aiming at a wide adoption of the CIM, Metafor will optimize the way climate data infrastructures are used to store knowledge, thereby adding value to primary research data and information, and providing an essential asset for the numerous stakeholders actively engaged in climate change issues (policy, research, impacts, mitigation, private sector)

Developing a Common Information Model for climate models and data

International audienceThe Metafor project, funded under the EU Framework Programme 7, proposes a Common Information Model (CIM) to describe in a standard way climate data and the models and modelling environments that produced this data. To establish the CIM, Metafor first considered the metadata models developed by other groups engaged in similar efforts in Europe and worlwide, such as the US Earth System Curator, explored fragmentation and gaps as well as duplication of information present in these metadata models, and reviewed current problems in identifying, accessing or using climate data present in existing repositories. Based on this analysis and on different use cases, the first version of the CIM is composed of 5 packages. The "data" package is used to describe the data objects that can be collected and stored in any number of ways; the "activity" package details the simulations and experiments and related requirements that were performed with numerical (possibly coupled) models described with the "software" packages. Both data and models can be associated with numerical grids represented by the "grid" package and finally the "shared" package gathers concepts shared among the other packages. The CIM is defined and implemented in the Unified Modelling Language (UML) and application schema have been generated in XML schema. Aiming at a wide adoption of the CIM, Metafor will optimize the way climate data infrastructures are used to store knowledge, thereby adding value to primary research data and information, and providing an essential asset for the numerous stakeholders actively engaged in climate change issues (policy, research, impacts, mitigation, private sector)

Developing a Common Information Model for climate models and data

International audienceThe Metafor project, funded under the EU Framework Programme 7, proposes a Common Information Model (CIM) to describe in a standard way climate data and the models and modelling environments that produced this data. To establish the CIM, Metafor first considered the metadata models developed by other groups engaged in similar efforts in Europe and worlwide, such as the US Earth System Curator, explored fragmentation and gaps as well as duplication of information present in these metadata models, and reviewed current problems in identifying, accessing or using climate data present in existing repositories. Based on this analysis and on different use cases, the first version of the CIM is composed of 5 packages. The "data" package is used to describe the data objects that can be collected and stored in any number of ways; the "activity" package details the simulations and experiments and related requirements that were performed with numerical (possibly coupled) models described with the "software" packages. Both data and models can be associated with numerical grids represented by the "grid" package and finally the "shared" package gathers concepts shared among the other packages. The CIM is defined and implemented in the Unified Modelling Language (UML) and application schema have been generated in XML schema. Aiming at a wide adoption of the CIM, Metafor will optimize the way climate data infrastructures are used to store knowledge, thereby adding value to primary research data and information, and providing an essential asset for the numerous stakeholders actively engaged in climate change issues (policy, research, impacts, mitigation, private sector)