NFDI4Earth – addressing the digital needs of Earth System Sciences

NFDI4Earth addresses the digital needs of Earth System (ES) Sciences (ESS) in Germany. ES scientists cooperate in international and interdisciplinary networks with the overarching aim to understand the functioning of and interactions within the ES and address the multiple challenges of global change.

NFDI4Earth is a community-driven process providing researchers with access to FAIR, coherent, and open ES data, innovative research data management (RDM) and data science methods. The NFDI4Earth work plan comprises four task areas (TA):

TA1 2Participate will engage with the ESS community and secures that NFDI4Earth is driven by user requirements: Pilots, small agile projects proposed by the community leverage existing technologies and manifest the researchers’ RDM needs. The Incubator Lab identifies promising new tools and scouts for trends in ES Data Science. The EduHubs produce open, ready to use educational resources on implementing FAIR principles in the ESS. The Academy will connect young researchers and their data-driven research to NFDI4Earth.

TA2 2Facilitate realizes the OneStop4All as the web-based entry point to FAIR, open and innovative RDM in ESS. It supports users on how to find, access, share, publish and work with ES data. Specific user requests beyond the scope of the OneStop4All will be routed to a distributed User Support Network. TA2 will also unlock the wealth of data that exists in governmental data repositories and will collaborate with all services on supporting long-term archiving.

TA3 2Interoperate aims at interoperability and coherence of the heterogeneous, segmented range of ESS RDM services. The ecosystems of ESS (meta-)data and software repositories, data science services and collaboration platforms will be synthesised. Based on common standards, TA3 provides consistent methods for a self-evaluation of RDM offerings. TA3 works on NFDI cross-cutting topics, provides a Living Handbook and ensures co-operation with international RDM initiatives and standardisation bodies.

TA4 2Coordinate facilitates the overall management of the NFDI4Earth consortium. TA4 acts as central support service and coordination of the technical implementations. It also offers virtual research environments. The NFDI4Earth Coordination Office will support the NFDI4Earth community in day-to-day operations and acts as the NFDI4Earth point of contact. It develops a commonly agreed model for a sustainable operation of NFDI4Earth.

The NFDI4Earth governance aims for an open and inclusive development of the NFDI4Earth services. As one example, so-called interest groups can be initiated by the NFDI4Earth community to explore individual topics in greater depth and provide input and feedback to the NFDI4Earth developments. Moreover, as a community we will work on a commonly accepted NFDI4Earth FAIRness and Openness Commitment that is key to fostering a cultural change towards FAIR and Open RDM for all.