KNMI Data Centre: Easy Access to Earth Observation Data
Sluiter, R.; van de Vegte, J.; Som de Cerff, W.; Plieger, M.; Noteboom, J.W.
KNMI, NETHERLANDS

KNMI is the Dutch national institute for weather, climate research and seismology. It disseminates weather and climate information to the public at large, the government, aviation and the shipping industry. KNMI conducts observations, develops models and performs fundamental research on the climate system. Earth observation plays an important role for research at KNMI. KNMI performs research and disseminates data in the fields of atmospheric composition (OMI, TROPOMI, Sciamachy), sea surface winds using scatterometers, wind profiling using space based profiling lidars (AEOLUS), and clouds and radiation using passive imagers (SEVIRI, AVHRR, MODIS).

Until recently this data was made available by different web portals and servers, without central archiving policy. The data collection was lacking search capabilities, standardized file formats and references to scientific publications which hampered data usage.

With the KNMI Data Centre (KDC) project these issues are resolved. In the project a user driven development approach with SCRUM was chosen to get maximum user involvement in a relative short development timeframe. Building on open standards and proven open source technology (which includes in-house developed software like ADAGUC WMS and, NADC data processing framework) and Portal) resulted in a first release in December 2012. This first release provides: 1) An user-friendly interface for (meta)data management; 2) Search capabilities using ISO 19115 (INSPIRE) compliant metadata available through a Catalog Services for the Web (CSW) server combined with deep search on geolocation and time. 3) NetCDF-CF files downloadable through FTP and HTTP services; 4) Viewing services based on the OGC Web Mapping Service Standard (WMS).

The number of datasets available in KDC is expanding rapidly and includes already MSG Cloud Physical Properties(MSG-CPP), Multi Sensor Reanalysis of Ozone, OMI aerosol, cloud and ozone products and OSI SAF wind products. Moreover potential disseminating of upcoming TROPOMI Level 2 data and activities for Long Term Data Preservation (LTDP) are foreseen within the KDC project.

This presentation will focus on the aspects of KDC relating to its technical challenges, the development strategy and the initial usage results of the data centre.