Data integration and semantic interoperability framework for the Svalbard Integrated Arctic Earth Observing System.

The Svalbard Integrated Arctic Earth Observing System (SIOS) is an international partnership of research institutions studying the environment and climate in and around Svalbard, with a dedicated Data Management System (DMS) Working Group organising data management activities. A core service of SIOS is its data catalogue, which aims to be the entry point to data discovery, visualisation and integration in the Svalbard region. This is only possible with a strong data management organization across partners and harmonisation of information from participating data centers. The central node in the SIOS DMS is harvesting information from these partner repositories through well established and standardized machine readable endpoints. SIOS, as an aggregator of metadata assets, is working on semantic interoperability and metadata enrichment to achieve a consistent and harmonized catalogue that can be used not only by researchers and decision-making bodies, but also integrated in data-driven arctic, polar, european and global initiatives (e.g. SAON Data Portal, WMO GCW, POLARIN, Arctic PASSION, ENVRI, EOSC).

A dedicated effort has been put to establish a list of essential Earth System Science (ESS) variables relevant to determine environmental change in the Arctic, through the SIOS Core Data (SCD) initiative - time series of data with at least a 5 year commitment. SCD are long lasting observing capabilities by SIOS partners. 

Through the support of data publication guidelines, brokering activities, FAIR data and vocabularies and consistent semantic relations, SIOS is aiming to continuously improve interoperability within and across relevant domains.