Aims of V-FOR-WaTer

The amount and diversity of digitally available environmental data is continuously increasing. However, they are often hardly accessible or scientifically usable. The datasets frequently lack sufficient metadata description, are stored in a variety of data formats, and are still saved on local storage devices instead of data portals or repositories.

The virtual research environment V-FOR-WaTer aims at making this data abundance available in an easy-to-use web portal. Environmental scientists get access to data from different sources, e.g. state offices or university projects, and can share their own data through the portal. Integrated tools help to easily pre-process and scale the data and make them available in a consistent format. Further tools for more complex scientific analyses and uncertainty propagation will be included. These are both implemented by the developers of the portal according to the requirements of the scientific community and contributed directly by the portal’s users. The possibility to store workflows together with the tools and respective data ensures reproducible data analysis. Additionally, interfaces with existing data repositories enable easy publication of the scientists’ data directly from the portal.

V-FOR-WaTer addresses the needs of researchers of hydrology and environmental science to not only find and access datasets, but also conduct efficient data-based learning with standardised tools and reproducible workflows.