User Tools
The WDDP provides a number of 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 record consists of a range of metadata elements covering aspects such as “author”, “abstract”, “purpose”, “publication time”, “data quality”, “format”, “restrictions” etc. in a standardized manner. 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 search the metadata catalogue, which are described in the following sections:
- Browse by topic
- Free text search
- Map search
- “What”, “Where” and “When” search
An overview about the search options is given in Figure 8. With the different search options the user is enabled to perform a search based on specific criteria. These criteria can be combined with a spatial search, a free-text search, etc. It works as an AND filtering. The data must match to all of the criteria used to be found. Clicking on “Search” in the search panel starts any search. When clicking on “Search” (8 in Figure 8) without any search criteria entered, all available metadata records will be listed.
