Building the information system of the French Critical Zone Observatories network: Theia/OZCAR-IS

Isabelle Braud (1) , Véronique Chaffard (2) , Charly Coussot (3) , Sylvie Galle (2) , Patrick Juen (3) , Hugues Alexandre (4) , Philippe Baillion (5) , Annick Battais (6) , Brice Boudevillain (7) , Flora Branger (8) , Guillaume Brissebrat (9) , Rémi Cailletaud (10) , Gérard Cochonneau (11) , Rémy Decoupes (12) , Jean-Christophe Desconnets (13) , Arnaud Dubreuil (14) , Juliette Fabre (15) , Santiago Gabillard (16) , Marie-Françoise Gerard (6) , Sylvain Grellet (16) , Agnès Herrmann (17) , Olivier Laarman (3) , Eric Lajeunesse (18) , Genevieve Le Henaff (19) , Olivier Lobry (20) , Antony Mauclerc (16) , Jean-Baptiste Paroissien (21, 22) , Marie-Claire Pierret (17) , Norbert Silvera (23, 24) , Hervé Squividant (19)

1 Riverly - Riverly
2 IGE - Institut des Géosciences de l’Environnement
3 UGA - Université Grenoble Alpes
4 ECOLAB - Laboratoire Ecologie Fonctionnelle et Environnement
5 CESBIO - Centre d'études spatiales de la biosphère
6 GR - Géosciences Rennes
7 LCPC - Laboratoire Central des Ponts et Chaussées
8 IRSTEA - Institut national de recherche en sciences et technologies pour l'environnement et l'agriculture
9 UMS 831 - Services communs OMP
10 CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
11 GET - Géosciences Environnement Toulouse
12 LACy - Laboratoire de l'Atmosphère et des Cyclones
13 UMR 228 Espace-Dev, Espace pour le développement
14 UMR LISAH - Laboratoire d'étude des Interactions Sol - Agrosystème - Hydrosystème
15 LEPSE - Écophysiologie des Plantes sous Stress environnementaux
16 BRGM - Bureau de Recherches Géologiques et Minières (BRGM)
17 LHyGeS - Laboratoire d'Hydrologie et de Géochimie de Strasbourg
18 IPGP - Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris
19 SAS - Sol Agro et hydrosystème Spatialisation
20 Orange Labs R&D [Rennes]
21 ISTO - Institut des Sciences de la Terre d'Orléans - UMR7327
22 Biogéosystèmes Continentaux - UMR7327
23 IRD - Institut de Recherche pour le Développement
24 iEES Paris - Institut d'écologie et des sciences de l'environnement de Paris

The French Critical Zone research infrastructure, OZCAR-RI, gathers 20 observatories sampling various compartments of the critical zone, each having developed their own data management and distribution systems. A common information system (Theia/OZCAR IS) was built to make their in situ observation FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable, reusable). The IS architecture was designed after consultation of the users, data producers and IT teams involved in data management. A common data model based on various metadata standards was defined to create information fluxes between observatories’ ISs and the Theia/OZCAR IS. Controlled vocabularies were defined to develop a data discovery web portal offering a faceted search with various criteria, including variables names and categories that were harmonized in a thesaurus published on the web. This paper describes the IS architecture, the pivot data model and open-source solutions used to implement data discovery, and future steps to implement data downloading and interoperability services

Keywords: data portal; FAIR data; OZCAR-RI; information system; land surface; critical zone; in situ observations

Domains: Sciences of the Universe [physics]; Sciences of the Universe [physics]; Continental interfaces, environment

Isabelle Braud, Véronique Chaffard, Charly Coussot, Sylvie Galle, Patrick Juen, et al.. Building the information system of the French Critical Zone Observatories network: Theia/OZCAR-IS. Hydrological Sciences Journal, 2020, Published online: 05 Jun 2020, pp.1-19. ⟨10.1080/02626667.2020.1764568⟩. ⟨insu-02917629⟩