EGU22-6258
https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu22-6258
EGU General Assembly 2022
© Author(s) 2022. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

The V-FOR-WaTer Virtual Research Environment for Environmental Research

Marcus Strobl1, Elnaz Azmi1, Sibylle K. Hassler2, Mirko Mälicke2, Jörg Meyer1, and Erwin Zehe2
Marcus Strobl et al.
  • 1Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Steinbuch Centre for Computing (SCC), Eggenstein-Leopoldshafen, Germany (marcus.strobl@kit.edu)
  • 2Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Institute of Water and River Basin Management, Chair of Hydrology, Karlsruhe, Germany

The amount and diversity of digitally available environmental data is continuously increasing.  However, they are often hardly accessible or scientifically usable. The virtual research environment V-FOR-WaTer aims at simplifying data access for environmental sciences, fostering data publications and facilitating data analyses.

V-FOR-WaTer already contains many of the necessary functionalities to provide and display data from various sources and disciplines. The detailed metadata scheme is adapted to water and terrestrial environmental data. Present datasets in the web portal originate from university projects and state offices. We are also finalising the connection of V-FOR-WaTer to GFZ Data Services, an established repository for geoscientific data. This will ease publication of data from the portal and in turn give access to datasets stored in this repository. Key to being compatible with GFZ Data Services and other systems is the compliance of the metadata scheme with international standards (INSPIRE, ISO19115).

The web portal is designed to facilitate typical workflows in environmental sciences. Map operations and filter options ensure easy selection of the data, while the workspace area provides tools for data pre-processing, scaling, and common hydrological applications. The toolbox also contains more specific tools, e.g. for geostatistics and for evapotranspiration. It is easily extendable and will ultimately include user-developed tools, reflecting the current research topics and methodologies in the hydrology community. Tools are accessed through Web Processing Services (WPS) and can be joined, saved and shared as workflows, enabling complex analyses and ensuring reproducibility of the results. To build workflows we include an easy-to-use drag and drop user interface.

How to cite: Strobl, M., Azmi, E., Hassler, S. K., Mälicke, M., Meyer, J., and Zehe, E.: The V-FOR-WaTer Virtual Research Environment for Environmental Research, EGU General Assembly 2022, Vienna, Austria, 23–27 May 2022, EGU22-6258, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu22-6258, 2022.