Secure Endangered Earth Data – SEND Earth Data

The project Secure Endangered Earth Data – SEND Earth Data is being carried out by a consortium of Germany’s leading geoscientific institutions with the aim of making the research data infrastructure in the geosciences more resilient. Based on use cases, the project will develop a national sustainability network and resilience framework for future data rescue operations involving endangered datasets across all sub-disciplines, including climate, ocean and biodiversity research. The project also aims to address key underlying legal issues and establish a strategic roadmap to support long-term data sovereignty and resilient scientific data services in the geosciences. Overall, the consortium builds on the established structures of NFDI4Earth, linking these to international initiatives such as the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC), the Research Data Alliance (RDA) and the American and European Geosciences Union (AGU, EGU).

Building up EOSC Node Germany

The NFDI – National Research Data Infrastructure association is actively involved in building the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) and, as a mandated member of the EOSC Association, is also making a significant contribution to establishing a resilient European research data infrastructure. The project Building up EOSC Node Germany aims to establish and expand the German EOSC Node, creating an interface between the research data holdings in NFDI repositories and the data holdings of the European research infrastructure network. In doing so, it will advance the integration between national and European research infrastructures and enable reciprocal access to research data and services across Europe. EOSC Node Germany contributes to a robust and adaptable system that creates a locally coordinated yet universally accessible European research data infrastructure. 

A Landsat archive for the European research community (EUROLAND)

Since 1972, the Landsat archive operated by the US space agency NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey has continuously collected high-resolution satellite images of the Earth’s entire surface. This standardised image data is of enormous importance for a wide range of Earth observation disciplines, including climate research, oceanography, forestry and geoecology. The images make it possible to detect and analyse changes over time. The Landsat archive has been freely accessible since 2008, but in light of recent developments in US science policy, research communities fear that access could be restricted in future, as has already happened in isolated cases. The project A Landsat archive for the European research community (EUROLAND) aims to safeguard this unique data resource by mirroring the global Landsat dataset at the German Aerospace Center in Oberpfaffenhofen and making reusable datasets available to the European Research Area. 

CMIP7-ark

Climate research centres around the world compile data for climate simulations, and this data is standardised and systematically analysed within the framework of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP7) run under the World Climate Research Programme. The analyses provide the scientific basis for the international climate assessment reports issued by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Owing to structural uncertainties and budget constraints, the data flows from key US climate research hubs are considered to be at risk. The CMIP7-ark project at the German Climate Computing Centre aims to close this potentially distorting data gap in global climate research by mirroring climate data from the United States as soon as it is released and curating it for cloud-based applications. View the project in GEPRIS(externer Link)

Integrating RegulonDB into the DSMZ Digital Diversity Initiative

RegulonDB is the internationally recognised reference database for gene regulation and genome organisation in the bacterium Escherichia coli K-12. Hosted in Mexico, the database is of outstanding importance because it provides the world’s largest and most detailed dataset on genetic regulatory networks in a free-living organism and serves as a fundamental model for understanding biological processes. The data is largely manually curated, however, and has not been prepared in a machine-readable format. In addition, no copy is maintained on a secondary server, meaning the data would be unavailable in the event of a system failure. The Integrating RegulonDB into the DSMZ Digital Diversity Initiative project therefore aims to prepare the data in accordance with the FAIR principles and integrate it in the DSMZ Digital Diversity Initiative of the Leibniz Institute DSMZ – German Collection of Microorganisms and Cell Cultures. This will make it possible in future to address cross-disciplinary questions relating to gene regulation using AI-supported and computational data analysis incorporating RegulonDB. View the project in GEPRIS(externer Link)

Global data archives: BMRBe

Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy can be used to analyse the three-dimensional structure of proteins as well as RNA and DNA at atomic resolution. This is of great importance in biomedicine, both for drug development and for understanding metabolic processes at the cellular level. Although Germany has an outstanding NMR infrastructure and therefore generates large volumes of data, NMR data is currently stored, curated and maintained in the global Biological Magnetic Resonance Data Bank in the United States. The Global data archives: BMRBe project will establish a European Biological Magnetic Resonance Data Bank (BMRBe) to safeguard this valuable biomedical data, thereby strengthening Europe’s digital sovereignty in structural biology. The project envisages integrating BMRBe in the worldwide Protein Data Bank (PDB). With the support of AI, this will open up entirely new research opportunities relating to RNA and DNA. View the project in GEPRIS(externer Link)

PANGAEA past and future efforts in rescuing data and creating resilience

externer Link)The project PANGAEA past and future efforts in rescuing data and creating resilience(externer Link) aims to systematically continue the measures already undertaken by the Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI) to safeguard endangered datasets. To this end, a structure will be established so as to be able to identify risks to existing datasets through a form of scouting and, where necessary, to secure relevant datasets in the fields of environmental research and geosciences within PANGAEA. This scouting is carried out in close coordination with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in the United States, which currently holds many of the datasets. NOAA explicitly drew attention to the fact that these datasets are subject to risks. The scouting will also contribute to coordinating activities to secure endangered data repositories across Europe. Visit the project’s website(externer Link) I  View the project in GEPRIS(externer Link)

Establishing a fully independent mirror of the UCSC Genome Browser in Germany

The project “Establishing a fully independent mirror of the UCSC Genome Browser in Germany” aims to create a mirror of the UCSC Genome Browser. This means that all data currently available via the UCSC Genome Browser will in future also be hosted on servers in Germany and integrated into the German bioinformatics infrastructure. The partners in Freiburg and the United States are able to build on a long-standing collaboration, so technical support for mirroring the data and the application itself is assured. Via an interactive web platform, the UCSC Genome Browser enables users to visualise and explore different aspects of human genetic and genomic data, so it is an indispensable tool for researchers worldwide. View the project in GEPRIS(externer Link)

Project SHIELD: Science & Heritage Infrastructure for Enduring Long-term Data

Working closely with Safeguarding Research and Culture (SRC) and the Data Rescue Project (DRP), the TIB – Leibniz Information Centre for Science and Technology in Hannover – aims to develop a decentralised, federated system for the long-term archiving of at-risk datasets. In the longer term, Project SHIELD: Science & Heritage Infrastructure for Enduring Long-term Data(externer Link) will secure high-volume datasets from US agencies that are relevant not only to engineering and technology but also to environmental sciences. These agencies are currently facing substantial budget cuts. Visit the project’s website(externer Link) I  View the project in GEPRIS(externer Link)

Securing and Preserving Energy Data from the Harvard Dataverse(externer Link)

The project Securing and Preserving Energy Data from the Harvard Dataverse(externer Link) focuses on safeguarding datasets for energy research: these are to be made accessible again via the Open Energy Platform in cooperation with the NFDI consortium NFDI4Energy. At present, the data is hosted in the Harvard Dataverse, whose terms of use state that access may be interrupted at any time without further justification. For this reason, a metadata schema has been developed to enable the transfer of the data to the Open Energy Platform. Visit the project’s website(externer Link)