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Season's Greetings
Dear reader,
the end of this year is again an opportunity to look back for a moment and to take the chance to express our gratitude for the huge efforts of all our members contributing to the development of the NFDI4Earth. We are many steps further on our way to form a strong Community of Practice for the Earth System Sciences within the NFDI and beyond. The submission of our interim report, the publication of our NFDI4Earth Openness & FAIRness Commitment, the continued development of our products, and numerous cross-consortia activities exemplify out progress.
May the holiday season offer some time to relax and to "charge the batteries" as well as to inspire new ideas and discoveries for your individual and our common challenges in the upcoming year. One key challenge will certainly be the preparation of our renewal proposal. More on this at the beginning of next year… but for now, we wish all of you Happy Holidays as well as some relaxing days over the turn of the year. We are looking forward to continuing our collaborations in 2025!
Please enjoy our Christmas Newsletter 🎄!
The NFDI4Earth Newsletter Team
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Deutsches Biomasseforschungszentrum Leipzig
NFDI4Earth Outcomes
NFDI4Earth & authorities benefit from exchange - Task Area 2 meeting in Hamburg
NFDI4Earth meets EOSC projects on digital long-term preservation
Save-the-Dates for 2025
FOSSGIS Conference: Advancing Open Source GIS and Open Data | 26-29 March
Dresden Nexus Conference: Advancing the Nexus Approach to Sustainability | 8-10 April
AGILE Conference: Geoinformation Science Responding to Global Challenges | 11-13 June
Conference on Research Data Infrastructures (CoRDI) at RWTH Aachen | 26-28 August
Our Back-to-back Plenary with NFDI4Biodiversity in Bremen | 22-25 September
International Data Week at Brisbane, Australia | 13-16 October
Participate in NFDI4Earth
HelpDesk - ‘Question of the Quarter’ ?
Join the NFDI4Earth Coffee Lectures!
Meet us here
NFDI4Earth @ EGU 2025 - Updates
News from the RDM & ESS Community
1st Base4NFDI User Conference 2024 in Berlin
Networking within the NFDI - FAIRagro and KonsortSWD
International News
RDA Birds of Feather Session: Cross-domain collaboration in the NFDI
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NFDI4Earth welcomes a new partnering institution. The Deutsches Biomasseforschungszentrum gGmbH (DBFZ) is a federal institution located in Leipzig, Saxony. It is represented by the Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture and conducts applied research into the energetic and integrated material use of biomass.
The DBFZ is split into four different research departments that exploit their synergies focussing on anaerobic processes, biobased products and fuels, catalytic emission control, smart biomass heating technologies and the systemic control of biomass. The latter accommodates the working group “resource mobilization” (lead: Dr. Friederike Naegeli de Torres) which is focussed on the development on geoinformatics methods, for instance the quantification and localization of biogenic resources for energy and material utilization.
Within NFDI, the DBFZ commits as a participant to FAIRagro with a focus to improve research data management and the evaluation of data quality. Within NFDI4Earth we want to contribute with our expertise in geoinformatics and access to our high performance computing cluster. Of course, we are interested to utilize the existing knowledge from the community to improve our skills with geospatial data and initiate new partnerships with focus on remote sensing data and waste or biomass residues.
Torsten Thalheim & Friederike Naegeli (DBFZ Leipzig)
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NFDI4Earth & authorities benefit from exchange - Task Area 2 meeting in Hamburg
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Elbphilharmonie, Hamburg by J. Tebbe on Unsplash (left) & meeting participants of NFDI4Earth Task Area 2 (right, Photo credit: TA2)
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The Task Area 2 team of NFDI4Earth met again this year for a face-to-face meeting on 13 & 14 November - this time in Hamburg. A total of 19 people took part - on site and online. Parts of the meeting were dedicated to discuss the achievements of each measure as well as the plans to contribute to the success of NFDI4Earth for the next two years.
A highlight of the meeting was a hackathon in which small teams of members from different measures worked on specific research questions using high-value datasets provided by the governmental agencies German Weather Service (DWD) and the Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources (BGR).
Working with this special data and the challenges it poses has provided important impetus for further work in the measures, but the feedback of information and requirements from the application to the authorities, and thus also to the GDI is particularly important. For the Measure 2.2 User Support Network, this resulted in a number of specific requests to the helpdesk. In addition to the meeting, there was also a short tour of the city and a visit to the plaza of the Elbphilharmonie concert hall.
Ivonne Anders & Hannes Thiemann (DKRZ Hamburg), Sibylle Hassler (KIT),
Felix Cremer & Fabian Gans (MPIBGC Jena)
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NFDI4Earth meets EOSC projects on digital long-term preservation
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Participants of the Networking meeting: Anna-Lena Flügel (DRKZ), Peter Valena (BSA), Alois Wieshuber (BSA), Andrea Lammert (DRKZ), Tim Schürmann (BKG), Photo credit: IG LTA |
Long-term preservation of digital research data has become an increasingly pressing topic, discussed at institutional, national, and European levels alike. A coordinated, cooperative, and interconnected approach between relevant stakeholders is essential to address the challenges of digital long-term preservation.
Working towards this goal, representatives from the NFDI4Earth Interest Group Long-Term Storage and Archiving (IG LTA) met with representatives from the EOSC projects Enhancing Digital preservation strategies at European and National level (EOSC EDEN) and Establishing a European Network of Trustworthy Digital Repositories (EOSC FIDELIS) at the DKRZ in Hamburg on 13th November. Both EOSC-projects are starting at the beginning of next year. A presentation with more information can be found here.
Together we discussed possible ways to align, connect, and support our common efforts to establish sustainable infrastructures and strategies for successful long-term preservation of digital research data. A key opportunity includes leveraging complementary networks of expertise to move towards this common goal at a national and European level. The connection between NFDI4Earth and the EOSC projects will be fruitful in both directions, e.g., in the form of participation in surveys and testing of planned toolkits by NFDI4Earth, and analysis of specific needs of the NFDI4Earth community by the EOSC projects. While this collaboration is still in its exploratory phase, the possibilities are promising.
Andrea Lammert (DKRZ Hamburg), Tim Schürmann (BKG Frankfurt/M.),
Peter Valena & Alois Wieshuber (both BSA Munich)
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FOSSGIS Conference: Advancing Open Source GIS and Open Data
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The castle of Münster where the FOSSGIS Conference will be held in spring 2025.
Foto credit: Sergey Mukhametov |
The annual FOSSGIS Conference is a conference of FOSSGIS e.V. and hosted by the Institute for Geoinformatics (ifgi), University of Münster. It focuses on promoting free and open-source software for Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and open data. The FOSSGIS e.V. is the official local chapter and point of contact for the OpenStreetMap project in Germany.
From 26th to 29th March 2025, participants including developers, users, researchers, and enthusiasts will gather in Münster to discuss applications, workflows and the latest developments in the field. Topics range from web mapping, geodata infrastructures, and processing to OpenStreetMap and the FAIR principles.
The conference highlights digital sovereignty and open science, supported by volunteer efforts and sponsorships. This year, NFDI4Earth plans to host a booth, to engage with the community, and to showcase its contributions to open science and research data management.
For more information and updates please visit the conference website.
Christiane Schmidt (GFZ, Potsdam) & Yomna Eid (University of Münster)
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Dresden Nexus Conference: Advancing the Nexus Approach to Sustainability
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From 8 to 10 April 2025, the global Resource Nexus community will come together in Dresden, to discuss the future of integrated approaches to environmental resources management in research, education, capacity building and practice. The conference will on the one hand look back to highlight important developments, accomplishments, and best-practice experiences of the recent past, and looking forward, it encourages the exchange between scientists, policymakers, the community of practice, and the young generation about ways to advance environmental Nexus approaches. Please find more information on the Nexus approach here.
In this context, a joint session about "Integrated Earth System Science Data for Integrated Management of Resources" is planned by UNU-FLORES and NFDI4Earth. The session will showcase examples of data integrated from heterogenous sources to answer questions related to the Resource Nexus, e. g., where are the linkages between environmental resources, such as water, energy, soil or waste, and what are the dependencies between them? Based on the data, what are potential synergies and trade-offs.
For more information and updates, visit the UNU-FLORES website.
Serena Coetzee (UNU-FLORES) & Jörg Seegert (TU Dresden)
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AGILE Conference: Geoinformation Science Responding to Global Challenges
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The Association of Geographic Information Laboratories in Europe (AGILE) has held annual conferences focused on Geographic Information Science since 1998. Its next conference will take place in Dresden from 10th to 13th June 2025 focusing on “Geographic Information Science responding to Global Challenges” which recognizes the pivotal role of geospatial data and analysis in in-forming decision-making for current global issues affecting humanity, the environment, and global resilience.
The conference aims to explore the critical role of geographic information science in addressing these issues and to advance the crossing of cultural, disciplinary, institutional, and technical boundaries towards an integrated and coherent information base as the foundation for evidence-based decisions.
We cordially invite researchers, scholars, practitioners, and professionals in all facets of Geographic Information Science and Technology and their applications to present ongoing research, showcase products, network with colleagues from Europe and the rest of the world, and find out about the latest developments in the field.
The deadline for workshop proposals is 10th January and for full paper submissions 15th January 2025. Please find further information at the Conference Website or contact auriol.degbelo@tu-dresden.de.
Auriol Degbelo (TU Dresden)
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Conference on Research Data Infrastructures (CoRDI) at RWTH Aachen
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The second edition of the Conference on Research Data Infrastructure (CoRDI) will take place from 26th to 28th August 2025 at RWTH Aachen University. A diverse program is planned at the C.A.R.L. lecture hall center, featuring keynotes, presentations, poster sessions, and a marketplace of ideas. Calls for papers and posters will be published soon here.
CoRDI stands for broader insights through better use of research data and the societal benefits that arise from it. Save the last week of August 2025 in your calendar now! Five highlights from last years conference are summarized in this blog post. We look forward to welcoming national and international stakeholders from all fields of research and the infrastructure sector to CoRDI 2025 in Aachen.
Nathalie Hartl (NFDI e.V.)
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Our Back-to-back Plenary with NFDI4Biodiversity in Bremen
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Not only since joining the NFDI, NFDI4Earth and NFDI4Biodiversity are ‘close mates’. This is documented by intensive personal and institutional contacts, cooperative activities and exchanges, as well as common events and meetings. Therefore, both consortia decided to hold a joint back-to-back community event in 2025 taking place on 22th to 25th September at the University of Bremen and at MARUM (Center for Marine Environmental Sciences).
NFDI4Earth opens the week on 22/23 September with its annual NFDI4Earth Plenary, followed by a joint event of both consortia on 23rd and 24th September. NFDI4Biodiversity concludes the week with its All Hands meeting on 24th and 25th September. For the common part, various formats such as poster sessions, a software marketplace, workshops, a bar camp, open spaces, and a get-together will offer the opportunity for a close and intensive exchange between the consortia and their protagonists.
We will inform you about the further planning in a timely and continuous manner next year.
Save the date and join us in Bremen in September 2025!
Claudia Müller (AWI Bremerhaven) & Jörg Seegert (TU Dresden, for the event co-organisation team)
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International Data Week at Brisbane, Australia
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The International Science Council’s Committee on Data (CODATA), World Data System (WDS), and Research Data Alliance (RDA) are pleased to announce that International Data Week 2025 (IDW 2025) will be held on 13th - 16th October 2025 in Brisbane, Australia.
Hosted by the Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC) with local partners including the Brisbane Convention & Exhibition Centre, Brisbane Economic Development Agency, and Tourism and Events Queensland, IDW 2025 will bring together researchers, data professionals, policymakers, and others to explore the theme: ‘Data for positive change: Empowering communities and advancing research.’
The event will feature the RDA 25th Plenary Meeting and SciDataCon 2025, with a programme addressing cutting-edge topics in data and research. There are co-located events such as eResearch Australasia, which will be linked on the main website in a special section.
Visit the conference website to learn more and register for updates.
Christiane Schmidt (GFZ Potsdam)
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Participate in NFDI4Earth
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The User Support Network (USN) answers the questions submitted to the public helpdesk. To give you an impression of our work, we will regularly present some of our answers here.
Question: Where do I find a description of a BUFR (Binary Universal Form for the Representation of meteorological data) - Format?
Answer: The BUFR Format is a data format that is used and further developed by the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO). It is primarily used to encode meteorological observations of all kinds - e.g. those from synoptic stations as well as radiosondes or satellite data. We offered three helpful links as a support; 1.) ECMWF (European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecast) User Guide decoding, 2.) the User Guide of the DWD (Deutscher Wetterdienst), and 3.) the User Guide of the WMO.
Feedback: No further user feedback was received in this case and we closed the ticket as completed.
Ines Langer (FU Berlin)
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Join the NFDI4Earth Coffee lectures !
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Please keep in mind to join the NFDI4Earth online Coffee Lecture series, in February and March 2025, every second Tuesday from 11:00 to 12:00 hrs and save-the-dates in your agenda.
We will explore a wide array of exciting topics, including the newly established Data Competence Centers, the NFDI4Earth OneStop4All, and the advancements in Large Language Models. For more information on upcoming lectures and registration, please visit our website.
Everybody is welcome and participation is free of charge!
Effi-Laura Drews (FZ Jülich & Geoverbund ABC/J, Kristin Sauerland (MARUM &
Deutsche Allianz Meeresforschung) & Jonas Kuppler (GFZ Potsdam & Geo.X)
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After the big success at the EGU2024, NFDI4Earth will again join next year's EGU General Assembly taking place from 27th April to 2rd May 2025 in Vienna, Austria. On the one hand, we will share a cluster of booths of different partners, e. g., the DKRZ and University of Hamburg, the Leibniz Supercomputing Centre Munich, the DLR, and the TU Dresden, perfectly located in the main entrance hall of the conference venue. On the other hand, NFDI4Earth members will contribute to the event with various co-organized sessions in the context of NFDI4Earth – you can find a comprehensive overview on our EGU website here.
Deadline for the current Call for Abstracts is Wednesday, 15 January 2025.
More information about our EGU activities will follow at the beginning of next year. We are looking forward to meeting many of you in Vienna next year!
Christin Henzen & Jörg Seegert (both TU Dresden)
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News from the Research Data Management & Earth System Science Communities
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1st Base4NFDI User Conference 2024 in Berlin
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Keynote presentation given by Lilli Freda, Executive Director and Daniele Bailo, IT officer of EPOS (European Plate Observing System) at the 1st Base4NFDI User Conference (Photo credit: Andrea Pörsch, GFZ)
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The First Base4NFDI User Conference in Berlin on 20th to 21st November got off to a good start with nearly 200 in-person and online participants. The aim of the user conference was to showcase the potential user community the Base4NFDI services currently in progress. For more information and access to the event slides see here. Some key take-away’s were the following:
1. Widening the user base of the Basic services: A common thread was the need to open up to more institutions and include all the RDM activities at national level in Germany in the relevant Base4NFDI services. Read more on our website.
2. Harnessing diversity: Appreciating the many different approaches the consortia have with each service or content creation and identifying a harmonised approach across the services at a technical level (standards, repository types) and also semantic (terminologies, ontologies).
3. Trusted, efficient services need the following: Security, sustainability and reproducibility, data quality and benchmarking and where relevant should be set as a standard part of service creation in the future Base4NFDI services.
Base4NFDI also held its first virtual Services Roadshow, an online event aimed at giving the community a comprehensive overview of its services. Over 200 people attended, including a third of them from beyond NFDI, demonstrating interest in the wider community for the potential services. Recordings and slides can be found here.
For more information about how to get engaged with Base4NFDI, and more about our activities keep an eye on our news and events section and and watch out for our next newsletter here.
Najla Rettberg (Base4NFDI, TU Dresden)
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Networking within the NFDI - FAIRagro and KonsortSWD
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Since the beginning of our involvement in the NFDI, NFDI4Earth promoted inter- and multidisciplinary interaction with various domain specific and related consortia in order to realise the vision of a OneNFDI. Among others, this includes NFDI4Biodiversity, FAIRagro, NFDI4Objects and NFDI4Energy, but also NFDI4Ing and KonsortSWD. FAIRagro and KonsortSWD held their annual meetings in November 2024 and invited NFDI4Earth representatives to present our work – a perfect occasion to give a short overview of both consortia to our community:
FAIRagro belongs to the life sciences and focuses on the agrosystem domain needed to develop sustainable crop production and agroecosystems. FAIRagro aims to advance agrosystem research by strengthening linkages across disciplines, scales, and methods through collaborative research data management (RDM). By integrating the interdisciplinary agrosystem scientific community into FAIRagro, the consortium endeavors to create the basis for a broad recognition and acceptance by the wider agricultural science community of the benefits of and need for FAIR RDM approaches. The FAIRagro consortium currently consists of 11 co-applicant organisations and 18 participants from the relevant disciplines in plant, soil and agri-environmental sciences.
KonsortSWD belongs to the humanities and social sciences and is the consortium for the Social, Behavioural, Educational, and Economic Sciences. Funded since October 2020, its goal is to facilitate and improve work with data from and for research. To this end, KonsortSWD is developing a range of services that address the needs of researchers and research data centres (RDCs). The consortium builds on two decades of experience of the RDCs, which offer researchers access to sensitive, i.e., access-restricted, data in particular. The cooperation between the 41 RDCs is coordinated by the Committee for Research Data Infrastructure. The connection to the different disciplines and research communities is provided by the German Data Forum (RatSWD), which is part of the consortium.
Joint projects are already underway with both consortia: a multidisciplinary use case with FAIRagro on "FAIR Data Infrastructure for Agrosystems" and a pilot "Earth Links – Easy Access to EOD for Social Societies" with KonsortSWD. Both projects demonstrate the synergetic potential of cross-consortia cooperation, which is to be continued and strengthened in the coming years through, e. g., joint calls for tenders. In addition, the consortia's own support structures offer a perfect opportunity for networking the help desks, which is currently being discussed in an NFDI Working Group.
There are no limits to further cooperations! Please get in touch with us!
Jörg Seegert (TU Dresden)
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RDA Birds of Feather Session: Cross-domain collaborations in the NFDI
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Meta-knowledge and innovation thrive at the intersection of disciplines, making interdisciplinary collaborations essential for addressing modern research challenges. The German National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI) exemplifies this potential by fostering exchange across 26 domain-specific consortia.
This year the Research Data Alliance (RDA) 23rd plenary meeting was hosted in San Jose, Costa Rica from 12th to 14th November 2024. The session 'A Dat(a) with Destiny: Cross-domain collaborations in the NFDI, and beyond' convened by B. Mathiak, L. Amelung, J. Mohrbacher and N. Rettberg highlighted success stories of cross-domain collaboration within the NFDI network. The success stories included collaborations regarding food security and preserving biodiversity combining data simulations of global and local effects of climate and market changes. Those collaborations are built on the basis of cross-consortia NFDI tools and infrastructures which are essential for scientific discovery.
The session also sought to identify best practices for enabling synergies in the international RDM realm, with lightning talks from LA Referencia, the Latin American Network for Open Science represented by Mr. Cetrangolo, and the CEO of Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC) Mrs. Hicks. At the end of the sesssion, the participants voted which instruments would foster cross-domain collaboration. Metadata was by far the strongest vote.
Looking ahead, the goal is to work within the RDA on methodologies for fostering cross-disciplinary collaboration, and collaborating with other interest groups to promote FAIR practices globally. These initiatives aim to unlock the transformative potential of cross-domain research.
Christiane Schmidt (GFZ Potsdam), Julia Mohrbacher (NFDI-MatWerk),
Lisa Amelung (DAPHNE4NFDI) & Najla Rettberg (Base4NFDI, TU Dresden)
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NFDI Consortium Earth System Sciences | https://nfdi4earth.de
Newsletter edited by: Christiane Schmidt (Helmholtz Centre Potsdam - GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences) & NFDI4Earth Coordination Office (TU Dresden)
Report news to: nfdi4earth-news@tu-dresden.de
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