European Long-Term Ecosystem and Socio- Ecological Research Infrastructure D3.1 eLTER State of the art and requirements Authors: Alessandro Oggioni (CNR-IREA), Christoph Wohner (EAA), John Watkins (CEH), David Ciar (CEH), Herbert Schentz (EAA), Simone Lanucara (CNR-IREA), Vladan Minić (BSI), Srđan ŠkrBić (BSI), Žarko Bodroški (BSI), Ralf Kunkel (FZ-Juelich), Jurgen Sorg (FZ-Juelich), Tomas Kliment (MK18), Francisco Sanchez (UGR), BarBara Magagna (EAA), Johannes Peterseil (EAA) Lead partner for deliveraBle: CNR Other partners involved: NERC/CEH, EAA, BSI, FZJ, UGR H2020-funded project, GA: 654359, INFRAIA call 2014-2015 Start date of project: 01 June 2015 Duration: 48 months Version of this document: 6 SuBmission date: 27 FeBruary 2017 Dissemination level PU PuBlic X PP Restricted to other programme participants (including the Commission Services) CO Confidential, only for members of the consortium (including the Commission Services) CI Classified, as referred to in Commission Decision 2001/844/EC Document history Date Author Description 20.7.2016 Peterseil, Johannes Generating the document and Basic structure 10.8.2016 Oggioni, Alessandro General things and text aBout OBservation and Spatial data, Semantic harmonisation, LifeWatch, GET-IT and EDI 12.8.2016 Wohner, Christoph Text about DEIMS, Geonetwork and B2Share 6.9.2016 Minić, Vladan Text about GEOSS and INSPIRE 17.1.2017 Kunkel, Ralf Text about TERENO 19.1.2017 Peterseil, Johannes Evaluation of the 19.2.2017 Minić, Vladan Implementation strategy for DIP 1.2.2017 Oggioni, Alessandro Semantic harmonisation, LifeWatch, GET-IT and EDI 24.2.2017 Oggioni, Alessandro Review and final version 27.2.2017 Peterseil, Johannes Review WP Lead 27.2.2107 Oggioni, Alessandro Signed of to coordinator Document ID: eLTER D3.1 State of art and requirements © eLTER consortium Page 1 of 80 Publishable Executive Summary The understanding of ecosystem processes and functioning, as well as their relation to environmental pressures and threats is one of the important questions being addressed on different scientific and political scales. In order to analyse this questions sound and well documented data are needed. The long term ecological research and monitoring network (LTER) with its wide range of LTER sites and LTSER platforms provides an important source of data for this assessment. LTER is organised by different national networks sharing a common conceptual Basis, But nevertheless are managed By different organisations with their own funding regimes and organisation structure. The eLTER H2020 project aims to develop the core components for a common eLTER Information System enhancing the accessability and usability of the data. The work aims to link data from the different distributed resources and make them available not only for the scientific experts but also for a more general use. The documentation of the site network as well as the provision of metadata and data are important tasks. The current report aims to collect information on the general use cases describing the needs for a common eLTER Information System. In addition relevant existing large scale e-Infrastructures are evaluated and relevant components for the implementation of the eLTER Information System are described. The requirements were collected By analysing existing documents from previous projects related to the implementation of data infrastructures. The report is the Basis for the development of the common architecture for the implementation of the eLTER Information System, which is descriBed in the report D8.1 Architecture design. Document ID: eLTER D3.1 State of art and requirements © eLTER consortium Page 2 of 80 Contents 1. Introduction 7 1.1. Aim of the document 9 1.2. eLTER approach to systems architecture development 9 2. Methods 10 3. Characterisation of LTER Europe 11 3.1. Network of networks 11 3.2. Network of Sites 13 3.3. Network of Data Management 17 3.4. Network of OBservation and Spatial Data 22 4. Requirements 25 4.1. User Stories 25 4.1.1. Site documentation 28 4.1.1.1. Exchange of site information 28 4.1.1.2. Site registry service 29 4.1.2. Person documentation 29 4.1.3. Metadata authoring 30 4.1.4. Metadata harvesting and exchange 30 4.1.5. Data sharing and data services 30 4.1.6. Data discovery and visualisation 31 4.1.7. Semantic harmonisation 32 4.1.8. Provide facilities to author MD on sites, datasets and data services 33 5. State of the art - general architectures for distributed data 33 5.1. LifeWatch 33 5.2. GEOSS 36 5.3. DataOne 39 5.4. TERENO 41 5.5. UK Data Infrastructure 46 5.6. INSPIRE 49 5.7. EUDAT Collaborative Data Infrastructure (CDI) 49 5.8. ENVRI 51 6. State of the art - tools and services 56 6.1. Data discovery 56 6.1.1. B2Find 56 Document ID: eLTER D3.1 State of art and requirements © eLTER consortium Page 3 of 80 6.1.2. GeoNetwork 58 6.1.3. pyCSW 59 6.1.4. GI-CAT 60 6.1.5. Metacat 60 6.2. Metadata authoring and sharing 61 6.2.1. DEIMS 61 6.2.1.1. Site documentation 62 6.2.1.2. Dataset documentation 64 6.2.1.3. Export metadata 66 6.2.2. Morpho 68 6.2.3. INSPIRE MD Editor 69 6.2.4. EDI MD Editor 69 6.3. Metadata harvesting 70 6.4. Data archiving and sharing 71 6.4.1. B2Share 71 6.4.2. GET-IT 72 6.4.3. TEODOOR Suite 73 6.5. Implementation strategy 76 6.5.1. Implementation strategy for data nodes (GET-IT) 77 6.5.2. Implementation strategy of SOS web map client in DIP 78 6.5.3. Implementation strategy of GeoNetwork in DIP 78 6.5.4. Implementation strategy of B2FIND in DIP 78 7. References 78 Document ID: eLTER D3.1 State of art and requirements © eLTER consortium Page 4 of 80 Glossary Term Definition API An application programming interface (API) is a set of suBroutine definitions, protocols, and tools for building application software. In general terms, it's a set of clearly defined methods of communication Between various software components CSW Catalog Service for the Web (CSW), sometimes seen as Catalog Service - WeB, is a standard for exposing a catalogue of geospatial records in XML on the Internet (over HTTP). The catalogue is made up of records that descriBe geospatial data (e.g. KML), geospatial services (e.g. WMS), and related resources DEIMS The Dynamic Ecological Information System providing a site and dataset catalogue enabling to author, discover and share metadata on long term research sites, datasets, data products, persons, and networks. DIP The Data Integration Portal is the central discovery and data visuliation component of the eLTER Information System EUDAT The EUDAT Collaborative Data Infrastructure is essentially a European e-infrastructure of integrated data services and resources to support research. GET-IT Geoinformation EnaBling ToolkIT starterkit®, is the open-source software suite GET-IT developed by researchers from IREA and ISMAR in the context of the RITMARE Flagship Project and LifeWatch Italy (http://www.ritmare.it). The suite is the first open-source collaBorative effort toward the integration of traditional geographic information with oBservational data. ISO The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) is an international standard- setting Body composed of representatives from various national standards organizations. LDAP Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) is a client/server protocol used to access and manage directory information. It reads and edits directories over IP networks and runs directly over TCP/IP using simple string formats for data transfer. MD modules MetaData modules within the DIP that manage, transform and deliver metadata to users Document ID: eLTER D3.1 State of art and requirements © eLTER consortium Page 5 of 80 OGC The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC), an international voluntary consensus standards organization, originated in 1994. In the OGC, more than 500 commercial, governmental, non-profit and research organizations worldwide collaBorate in a consensus process encouraging development and implementation of open standards for geospatial content and services, sensor weB and Internet of Things, GIS data processing and data sharing. RITMARE RITMARE Flagship Project is one of the National Research Programmes funded By the Italian Ministry of University and Research. RITMARE is the leading national marine research project for the period 2012-2016; the overall project budget amount to 250 million euros, co-funded By puBlic and private resources. SOS The Sensor OBservation Service (SOS) is an Open Geospatial Consortium weB service created for the provision of oBservational data, also for to specialised oBservation type (e.g. multipointOBservation, trajectoryOBservation, gridOBservation, specimenOBservations). W[FCM]S The Open Geospatial Consortium WeB Feature Service Interface Standard (WFS) provides an interface allowing requests for geographical features across the weB using platform-independent calls. The Open Geospatial Consortium WeB Coverage Service Interface Standard (WCS) defines WeB-based retrieval of coverages – that is, digital geospatial information representing space/time-varying phenomena. A WeB Map Service (WMS) is a standard protocol for serving (over the Internet) georeferenced map images which a map server generates using data from a GIS database. Document ID: eLTER D3.1 State of art and requirements © eLTER consortium Page 6 of 80 1. Introduction To assess the effects of environmental pressures on ecosystem functions and the derived ecosystem services a deep understanding of the underlying processes is needed. Long term oBservation distributes along different geographic, ecosystem and environmental gradient are an important source of data to address this questions (Mirtl, 2010). Mostly starting in the early 90ies, a range of monitoring sites and research projects was initiated collecting information on the environment in different compartments many addressing important environmental threats like acidification and forest die-back. This also resulted in a variety of different sites.