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Introduction to ICOS

What is ICOS?

ICOS (Integrated Carbon Observation System) is a pan-European research infrastructure for observing and understanding the greenhouse gas (GHG) balance of Europe and its adjacent regions. The major task of ICOS is to collect and make available high-quality observational data from its state-of-the-art measurement stations operated with a long-term (20+ years) perspective. These data will contribute to research aiming to describe and understand the present state of the global carbon cycle, as well as help predict future behavior of GHG emissions. Importantly, all data produced and distributed by ICOS will be openly available to everyone wishing to use them, under a license similar to Creative Commons 4 Attribution-ShareAlike.

At its inception as an ERIC in November 2015, ICOS RI has 9 member countries: Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland. The ICOS organization is quite distributed, with the Head Office located in Finland, the Carbon Portal data center in Sweden, and a number of central facilities (thematic centers and central analytical laboratories) hosted by Belgium, France, Germany, Italy and Norway.

Data flow in ICOS

The figure below schematically illustrates the data flow in ICOS.

The measurement station networks of ICOS span three themes - atmosphere, ecosystem and ocean - together, these provide information on greenhouse gas concentrations and exchange, meteorological and other environmental variables. Measurements are carried out on ecosystem sites, in tall atmospheric towers and on oceanic platforms and vessels. The stations are operated by the ICOS member countries. The collected data are then processed at common thematic centers, one for each main branch (atmospheric, ecosystem, ocean). The thematic centers each operate local computing centers, where data are processed. In addition, the centers offer both ICOS observation station personnel and end users of ICOS data products expert advice and support in technical matters.

Quality-assured and -controlled data products from the thematic centers are transferred to the Carbon Portal, which stores the data & associated metadata in the ICOS community data repository. The Carbon Portal acts as a “one-stop shop” for ICOS data products, featuring advanced search, visualization and downloading services.

The portal is also responsible for the central ICOS functions of curation, cataloguing, assigning identifiers & facilitating data citation, data usage tracking and long-term archiving, as well as for providing user community support. Finally, it will also manage “elaborated” data products from external users.

High diversity of data producers, products and users

A general characteristic of ICOS is diversity: diversity among data producers, data products and data users. In the following, we briefly describe these three aspects, and the challenges they bring to ICOS.

Data producers: In ICOS, data are produced at several levels: “Raw” observation data are collected at ICOS measurement stations, which are operated on a national level by research institutes or similar organizations. Next, the ICOS thematic centers take over to process and refine the raw sensor data in a standardized manner. Finally, expert users (mainly external to ICOS) make use of ICOS observations to produce various kinds of “elaborated products”.

Although many aspects of data management can and will be harmonized throughout the RI, there exists a broad range of tools and practices that are in parallel use, especially when comparing the details of the different thematic centers’ work flow. The challenge is to bring together all outcomes under a common data curation scheme.

Data products: These consist mainly of three kinds: 1) raw sensor data collected at the measurement stations associated with ICOS RI; 2) aggregated and quality-controlled observational data that are produced by ICOS expert centers based on the sensor data; and 3) so-called “elaborated” data produced by researchers external to ICOS, but based (in part) on ICOS observational data. The latter are typically results from calculations modeling global or regional greenhouse gas budgets.

The data products differ not only in content but also encompass a range of different sizes, release frequencies, file formats etc. This introduces a need for unique persistent identifiers at all levels of the data life cycle, and a common “data object metadata database” which can act both as a catalog and as a knowledge repository with respect to e.g. data types.

Data users: ICOS expects to serve users from a broad spectrum of communities and categories, including “experts” (with background in atmospheric, ecosystem, climate and environmental sciences), “other scientists” (with background in other fields, like medicine, geosciences, geography etc.), “educational” (teachers wanting to use data in courses, students needing data for reports & theses), “policymakers” (including governmental agencies), “companies” (wishing to use data for services, or interested in developing new measurement techniques), and “general public”. Each of these groups has quite different needs and interests.

Requirements gathered

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General requirements

Identification and citation

Curation

Cataloguing

Processing

Optimisation

Provenance

Community support

Summary and conclusions

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