Data management at MET Norway

At MET Norway, data have always been managed, albeit in a rather narrow technical sense. The main focus has been on storage, primarily for operational data. More recently, the issues of delivering, sharing and reusing data have steadily gained prominence. Still, the legacy of data storage systems built up over many years is an important factor in any uniform data management program.

During the International Polar Year (IPY), MET Norway was the international coordinator for operational data. IPY data management was based on the principle of distributed data management through exchange of standardised descriptions of datasets between contributing data centres.

At the global level, the institute is the primary representative for Norway in the WMO. WMO has in recent years reorganised its approach to documenting and sharing data through two major activities: WIS and WIGOS. Both are metadata-driven activities that follow the same principles as Geonorge and INSPIRE, although there are differences concerning standards required.

Data management at NIVA

NIVA works with complex data of many:

  • Types: biological, ecological, physical, chemical
  • Matrices: water, sediment, biota
  • Sampling methods: sensors/loggers, FerryBox, manual sampling
  • Data structures: time series along transect or in fixed position, classic stations, etc.
  • Environments: rivers, lakes, marine open water, etc.

The complexity of NIVA’s data has been shown to be a challenge when it comes to overall data sharing. Nevertheless, much of our data is available in several data portals such as Vannmiljø, Artsdatabanken, and ICES, and NIVA is actively working on making its data more findable and interoperable. We are a partner in many EU projects and data management responsible for some (e.g. PAPILLONS).

Data management at NILU

NILU is one of Europe’s leading institutions for storage of data on atmospheric composition. At present, NILUs thematic databases collects, organizes and makes available data on behalf of, among others, the UN, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), several European research infrastructures and the European Space Agency (ESA). The information gathered in these databases is openly available and free of charge to anyone who wants access to atmospheric research data, and can be accessed through several data portals such as EBAS, EVDC and ACTRIS.

More about the storage of such data at NILU can be found here: Open data.

Furthermore, NILU monitors data for the following areas in Norway:

  • Airborne transport, including environmental contaminants
  • Climate
  • Ozone layer and UV

NILU’s environmental monitoring takes place at so-called background stations (NILU's observatories and monitoring stations) that are positioned to be minimally affected by nearby sources of emissions.

Lastly, NILU is the National Air Quality Reference Laboratory of Norway, appointed by the Norwegian Environment Agency. This effort is being undertaken in accordance with the European Union’s air quality directive 2008/50/EC, and the Norwegian Pollution Control Act. Each measurement grid operator reports quality-assured data on a monthly basis to the national database for local air quality. Real-time air quality status and the air quality status relative to pollution limits are available on the national web portal www.luftkvalitet.info and www.luftkvalitet.nilu.no.

Data management at NINA

NINA focuses on Nature and Human-nature interactions, biodiversity, and terrestrial ecology and requires the management of a wide variety of data from different sources, in multiple formats. Based on specific agreements with national and international partners, some workflows for data sharing were implemented, for example, the species observation data delivered to the Norwegian Biodiversity Information Centre Artsdatabanken reaching the Global Biodiversity Information Facility GBIF, or the Geospatial data delivered to the Norwegian Mapping authority data portal Geonorge.

Most of the data workflows traditionally follow a project-based approach. Most often data sharing solutions were based on specific project requirements. Data management in the past was scattered with a lack of standardization (with few exceptions) and data was often invisible or unreachable to external stakeholders.

In time, many different workflows and solutions for storing and organizing data were designed and implemented, with some attempts to centralize the storage of specific data types. Geospatial data was organized in internal file systems with naming conventions, for example, and most of the data stored in centralized databases of growing dimensions.

NINA is currently transitioning to a FAIR data-sharing model, adopting International standards and restructuring the internal policies and workflows for storing, sharing, and delivering data and metadata. Centralized metadata catalogs will allow more distributed data management with optimized solutions for finding, accessing, and processing data. Every new starting project is required to provide a Data Management Plan using the easyDMP tool.