Context of general requirements in ACTRIS

Summary of ACTRIS general requirements

Complete report at: https://envriplus.manageprojects.com/projects/requirements/notebooks/470/pages/36/comments/256/attachments/229/download

ACTRIS (Aerosols, Clouds, and Trace gases Research InfraStructure Network) is a European Project aiming at integrating European ground-based stations equipped with advanced atmospheric probing instrumentation for aerosols, clouds, and short-lived gas-phase species. ACTRIS had the essential role to support building of new knowledge as well as policy issues on climate change, air quality, and long-range transport of pollutants.

ACTRIS data are available at no cost from the ACTRIS Data Portal (http://actris.nilu.no), which provides access to the ACTRIS Data Base to select different type of data by fields (e.g. station, date, and other metadata), by period time (e.g. volcanic eruption in Iceland 2010) or by repositories (e.g. CLOUDENT, EARLINET and EUSAAR). Once retrieved the data, users can plot the selected data in the portal.

ACTRIS has three data repositories (also called topic databases): near surface data (EUSAAR), aerosol profiles (EARLINET) and cloud profiles (CLOUDNET). Currently, ACTRIS is developing a new database with satellite data linked to ACTRIS ground based data. There are differences for retrieving data between those three repositories, but generally, each station acquires data and processes it at the station level. Later, data (processed) is uploaded to the topic database where a quality check procedure is performed before storing the data. The Data Portal is structured as a metadata catalogue for searching in the topic databases and enabling data download from the primary archive. Note that some of the data processes (e.g. aerosol profile data) will be centrally and automatically performed and data will be directly submitted to the database.

Taking account the software and computational environments involved in ACTRIS, in the case of the aerosol profile data, each station provides NetCDF files (standard data format), and they are transferred to a computational resource (located in CNR-Potenza, Southern Italy) for processing them by using the Single Calculus Chain (SCC).  Once processed the data, a dialog with the data provided is performed for upload it to the topic database (EARLINET). Furthermore, some parts of the Data Portal for visualizing the data are made in JAVA. ACTRIS does not offer software to users yet, but in the next year they will provide tools to perform data processing and the quality check.

ACTRIS has three different data policies, one for each data topic, but they are working for having a homogenous data policy (will be covered in the next data management plan). As we mentioned before, data is free and accessible, and for some data, registration is needed to know and understand who is using the data. However, there is a requirement to acknowledge the authorship of the data for publications. (ACTRIS Data Policy [1])

Regarding to the question of interactions with other RIs, eruption volcanic data or near surface data can be interested to many RIs, as instance, Volcanology community (EPOS RI) and Marine community (EuroOcean RI).

ACTRIS brings to ENVRIplus the SCC software for aerosol profiles data analysis. The software itself is offered as open source software. It also offers access to the computing resource for performing analysis of some data and quality checks. Besides, ACTRIS has open-access calibration facilities (3 calibration centres) and advanced observing platforms to Trans-National Access (TNA) to the benefit of a large user community, including SMEs, and to further facilitate virtual access to high quality information, tools and services enhancing the ACTRIS Data Centre.

ACTRIS provides expertise in different ways:

• Providing TNA to different calibration centres and laboratories
• Training of operators and users and enhance the linkage between research, education and innovation in the field of atmospheric science, e.g, quality check. 
• Providing material for doing quality check in the user side.

The access to related scholarly publications depends of the journals policy, but ACTRIS website provides different literature like the Data Management Plan and Data Policy are available.

ACTRIS would like to achieve through the participation to ENVRIplus:

• To improve the interoperability to make the data as accessible and understandable as possible to the others
• To understand which are the best practice to discover data
• To link with others RIs, because there are many points in common (technology and scientifically)
• To improve through the experience of the others RIs

ACTRIS expects that ENVRIplus provides technology/advice for:

• Activity of sensors
• How instrument works in extreme conditions
• Small sensors capabilities

About the standards, most of the data is in NetCDF format, but ACTRIS is moving to CF (Climate and Forecast )1.5 -Compliant format. For near surface data the datasets are archived and provided in NASA-Ames 1001. The exploitation of the data is provided by the ACTRIS Data Portal, where users can see and access the three type of data separately, but in the future, the visualize of the three type of data will be combined in a single plot. 

The data visualization needs to be improved to make it as much understandable as possible, because ACTRIS-users normally work with many data at the same time.  And the data provision can be also improved.

The current data management draft covers already all the topics except the optimization, and it will be updated once per year.

The most challenging have non-functional constraint for ACTRIS can be the computational environment cost, because is going to be open quite soon, so depending how many users access to it, it can be a problem or not.

ACTRIS has a general concern about the access of the data. For accessing to most of the data, users need password and login. Depending of the network, ACTRIS has different timing to provide data, e.g. near surface data is provided once per year, which is no the case for the other types. ACTRIS does not have any embargo period.

ACTRIS has a data, software and computational environment subject to an open-access policy. More information available in the data policy document [2].

The main big problems to handling and exploiting data are:

• Data visualization, which is the key-factor for the effective data-use in order to avoid users to be lost handling many variables at the same time.
• Providing and handling data from external community. ACTRIS is expected to provide the data in certain amount of time, avoiding delays. However, if the amount data sent by an external community is huge, receiving, processing (calculus chain) and performing the quality check of the data can be very time-consuming.
• Many users accessing to ACTRIS services at the same time can become a problem for computational and for archiving.

References:

1. http://actris.nilu.no/Content/Documents/DataPolicy.pdf)
2. http://actris.nilu.no/Content/Documents/DataPolicy.pdf

Detailed requirements

Formalities (who & when)