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Initiative

HMG NetCDF

Helmholtz Metadata Guidelines for the creation of NetCDF files

Evolving initiative jointly driven with the KIT Institute of Meteorology and Climate Research (IMK) Atmospheric Aerosol Research (AAF) and supported by the Helmholtz DataHub.

The NetCDF Metadata Guideline Initiative is a collaborative effort from researchers, research data management, research data infrastructure and metadata experts from several research centers across Germany. We are supported by the Helmholtz DataHub, the central data infrastructure of the Research Field Earth and Environment within the Helmholtz Association. This initiative aims to develop harmonized data handling guidelines to unify the diverse sub-communities within both observational and modeling fields, building towards a unified and consistent infrastructure for environmental research data.

Our approach includes examining existing guidelines, followed by their integration and expansion to address diverse needs within Earth and Environment disciplines. We will produce a set of comprehensive guidelines designed to enhance data interoperability and reusability, along with tools to facilitate their adoption.

Key milestones include:

  • Reconciling attributes in former guidelines.
  • Implementation of a collaborative and public guidelines document.
  • Development of machine-readable templates and validation tools.
  • Provision of highly user-friendly tools that support scientists when entering metadata profiles based on the guidelines.
  • Integration of our enhanced NetCDF-profiles into selected downstream clients like theEarth Data Portal (EDP).