Data Center for Environmental and Ecological Research in West China

Zhuotong Nan, Xin Li, Yongjian Ding, Jian Wang, Lizong Wu

Cold and Arid Regions Environmental and Engineering Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China

Data center for environmental and ecological research in West China (WestDC) is a key project of “West Plan” initiated by National Natural Science Foundation Committee of China (NSFC), aiming at archiving the large amount of scientific data produced during the implementation of “West Plan” since the year of 2000, serving to the earth surface research in western China . WestDC consists of four platforms, i.e., data sharing platform, knowledge repository platform, cooperation and exchange platform, and so-called data science platform. By reviewing of existing geographic metadata standards, the approach of extending ISO 19115 has been adopted to serve the data sharing using ArcIMS 9 and associated custom helper metadata editor. Knowledge repository platform was built upon the Open Archival Information System (OAIS) reference model, with cooperation with the Scientific Information Center for Resources and Environment of Chinese Academy of Sciences, to form a document library covering the environment and ecology research in West China , by using methods like information syndication, resource linking, and system integration. The cooperation and exchange platform provides a space to facilitate communicate and exchange of ideas by forum, mal list, and other current advanced online conference approaches. Data science platform is considered as an advanced data processing and re-producing component, providing tools for transformation between different data formats, processing, and visualization, etc., and repacking and reanalysis datasets, such as model datasets, and assimilated datasets.

In this paper, those four platforms will be introduced in details in terms of ideas and implementation, along with the issues arising during the development. Several points concerned by most datacenters will be discussed as well, such as the data access restriction to prevent from malicious downloading and assure the higher priority of access and exclusive use of data owners, data reference solution by using a unique identifier, and data services for which we formed specific data service group and published data newsletters by both e-mail and postal office.

Keywords: Data Center for Environmental and Ecological Research in West China (WestDC), National Natural Science Foundation Committee of China ( NSFC ), metadata, OAIS, data science