GlobAl Integrated EArth Data Implementation Network
Active GO FAIR Implementation Network
The GAIA Data IN will build on, and promote, extensive pre-existing coordination work, services, tools, and recommendations, whilst seeking to improve transdisciplinary and cross-domain data interoperability. A key objective will be to facilitate access to both space and in-situ data (land, sea, air). To encourage re-use and the sharing of best practices, the GAIA Data IN will extend the scope of working groups exploring technical topics of common interest (DOI, Long Term Preservation, Catalogues, Format, SSO, Data curation and processing, etc.), promote dialogue to seek broader and deeper international agreements, and where appropriate implement recommendations established by the Working Groups of the Research Data Alliance, and other international fora. Our long term goal is to actively participate in the seismic shifts in the global data landscape that is driving the co-design and co-implementation of the EOSC, DIAS and the global Internet of FAIR Data & Services. The GAIA Data IN is open to any new partner or interested party and will actively seek to include or work with organisations across the globe.
Main objectives and tasks
Objective 1: Define and implement common catalogue standards and distributed services to enable cross-disciplinary data discovery, access, interoperability, and reuse
Harmonizing and harvesting existing catalogues in different fields and data infrastructures, and aggregating FAIR data to populate common catalogues. This will entail:
- Adoption and maintenance of commonly agreed vocabularies and ontologies.
- Setting up standardized vocabulary servers.
- Seeking agreement on, and harmonization of, metadata standards (ISO or Inspire recommendations for example).
- Seeking agreement on community defined best practice for metadata structure.
- Building and maintaining user interfaces and services to facilitate browsing for discovery using the latest indexing techniques.
Objective 2: Promote the FAIR principles and implement FAIR distributed services using common or interoperable solutions wherever possible
The GAIA Data partners and hubs are actively involved in most European environmental & Earth research infrastructures (eg ACTRIS, EPOS, EMSO, etc.) and will contribute to, and implement standards established by ENVRI-FAIR.
Objective 3: Facilitate the aggregation, the logistics, and the analysis of composite datasets and secondary data products across Earth science fields.
To achieve this objective GAIA Data will:
- Adopt standards and services both for data interoperability in processing purposes, and for data management and handling along software pipelines and workflows.
- Propose an architecture and software platform of distributed services enabling the combination of large and multi-source data distributed in different data and services centres. This should result in a kind of Earth System Virtual observatory associated to data lakes at different sites.
- Make it easier for any researcher, or interested party, to develop customised data-handling, analysis, aggregation, or visualisation workflows. Different approaches that will be explored include Pangeo /Datacubes and New products: Analysis Ready Data.
Objective 4: Promote dialogue, exchange and agreements within International initiatives
The partners of the GAIA Data IN are either partners, or actively participating members in major international fora and organisations including, GEOSS, RDA, ESA Data Coordination Body “EO innovation Europe”’, H2020/EOSC projects : ENVRI FAIR, EOSC Pillar,
NextGEOSS, and EuroGEOSS, amongst others. These networks, and international meetings or working groups, will be used to diffuse and share best practices, seek agreements at the international level, and promote dialogue to increase the FAIRness of Earth science data.
Manifesto and activity plan
Link to manifesto in PDF
Contact
Frédéric Huynh – frederic.huynh@ird.fr
Are you interested in joining GAIA Data IN? Please express your interest by filling in the form below. Your request will be forwarded to the IN Coordinator who will get in touch as soon as possible.
Partners
The GAIA Data consortium currently includes 34 partners (CNES, CNRS, IFREMER, IRD, IGN, IRSTEA, Météo-France), 4 Data Hubs (www.theia-land.fr; www.odatis-ocean.fr; www.aeris-data.fr; www.poleterresolide.fr), along with 20 Data & services infrastructures.
