Since 2017, Open Data has been a part of the DWD data distribution strategy. Starting with a small selection of meteorological products, the number of available datasets has grown continuously over the last years. Since the start, users can access datasets anonymously via the website https://opendata.dwd.de to download file-based meteorological products. Free access and the variety of products has been welcomed by the general public as well as private met service providers. The more datasets are provided in a directory structure, however, the more tedious it is to find and select among all available data. Also, metadata and documentation were available, but on separate public websites. This turned out to be an issue, especially for new users of DWD's open data.
To help users explore the available datasets as well as to quickly decide on their suitability for a certain use case, the Open Data team at DWD is developing a geoportal. It enables free-text search along with combined access to data, metadata, and description along with interactive previews via OGC WMS.
Cloud technology is a suitable way forward for hosting the geoportal along with the data in its operational state. Benefits are expected for the easy integration of rich APIs with the geoportal, and the flexible and fast deployment and scaling of optional or prototypical services such as WMS-based previews. Flexibility is also mandatory to respond to fluctuating user demands, depending on time of day and critical weather situations, which is supported by containerization. The growing overall volume of meteorological data at DWD may mandate to allow customers to bring their code to the data – for on-demand processing including slicing and interpolation – instead of transferring files to every customer. Shared cloud instances are the ideal interface for this purpose.
The contribution will outline a protoype version of the new geoportal and discuss further steps for launching it to the public.
How to cite: Reetz, B., Riede, H., Fuchs, D., and Hagedorn, R.: DWD Geoportal – Converging open data, metadata and documentation in a user-friendly way, EMS Annual Meeting 2021, online, 6–10 Sep 2021, EMS2021-423, https://doi.org/10.5194/ems2021-423, 2021.
