ALBERT

Description: Thematic Open Access data portals foster and support an open data culture in order to reduce knowledge gaps and data uncertainty. We here present the Arctic Permafrost Geospatial Center (APGC), which provides open access, high quality geospatial data in the field of permafrost research. The APGC mission is (i) to provide data that is of high usability, significance and impact, and (ii) to facilitate data discovery, data view and supports metadata documentation and exchange via a data catalogue (http://apgc.awi.de/). The Data Catalogue is based on the open source CKAN data catalogue architecture, which uses the metadata standard DCAT. The catalogue structure can host a variety of data models of varying themes, format, spatial and temporal extents. Data is documented according to the fair data principles. Each catalogue entry has a data abstract, data preview and extensive metadata that can be downloaded in RDF/XML-, JSON- or Turtle-format. Data can be searched by location – using spatial keywords or by interactively selection locations on a base map. Data can further be searched by product type, project, tags, keywords, license type, or data format. Data can be downloaded directly via link to the publishing data repository such as PANGAEA. APGC, initially supported by the ERC PETA-CARB and the ESA GlobPermafrost projects currently features over 100 selected datasets mainly from these projects. A WebGIS application is available for most of these data sets, which allows users to explore the data interactively (http://maps.awi.de). Data provide information about surface and subsurface permafrost characteristics in the Arctic, Antarctica, or mountain permafrost areas, e.g., soil temperatures, soil carbon, ground ice, land cover, vegetation, periglacial landforms, subsidence and more. Data include in-situ measurements, earth observation, and modelling and are provided in vector or raster format. New data submissions to the catalogue are evaluated according to the following access criteria: permafrost focus, significance and impact, access, quality, and metadata. APGC invites submissions from both individual users as well as project consortiums.