The WASCAL Data Discovery Portal (WDDP)1 is used to access and search information on all kinds of data generated by or related to WASCAL. It queries the CMC and other metadata catalogues according to certain user specific search conditions, displays the results and allows, if permitted, a download of the data. You can obtain date from the portal in (basically) three steps:
The WDDP provides methods to search for sensors, maps, reports, publications and any other research related digital resource, which in the following we call “data” for reasons of simplification. The information about available data is organized in a metadata catalogue (metadata = data about data). A metadata record provides information on different aspects of a digital resource. The metadata catalogue entries are linked either to external data sources or to the WASCAL research project, where the data is stored and can be retrieved from. There are several possible ways to query the metadata catalogue, which are described in the following sections.
Figure 2 shows the basic layout of the main page of the WASCAL Data Discovery Portal with its one main user interfaces. The user is enabled to perform a search by topic, get the results and include the interactive map layers (if provided by a metadata set) into the map viewer on one screen. How that works is described in the following sections of the handbook. The different sections (1-4) of the page are:
After a search query is triggered, a second page will be invoked (see Figure 3). A browseable map viewer shows the geographical reference of the data sets (if provided), which allows you to take a look at the positions of the stations of your interest. By selecting of a station you have access to further metadata details of this station. The map viewer uses numbered marker symbols; time series data from sensor networks are numbered by letters (A, B, …), whereas “static” data sets are numbered by digits (1, 2, …). In the lower part of the screen a paginated list of the queried data sets with the same enumeration as in the map viewer is shown. Finally, the left part of the screen provides possibilities to extend or restrict the current query or initiate new data queries, such as specifying new “What”, “When” or “Where” conditions (see …). Details:
Clicking on the „View Metadata“ button opens a third page. A detail view to the metadata will be displayed, allowing the user to investigate the details of this metadata such as keywords, contact, lineage, online resources etc. Figure 4 gives an example with the details: