EarthServer—ECMWF's Experiences of Using OGC Standards

ECMWF is partner of the EU-funded EarthServer-2 project and explores the feasibility to provide on-demand access to and server-based processing of meteorological and climate data via the interface standard Web Coverage Service (WCS), defined by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC). OGC standards have the potential to make ECMWF's data easier accessible to data users, especially outside the meteorological domain.

The established service bases on the Rasdaman array database and the OGC standard interface WCS. This allows for the efficient retrieval and processing of geographical subsets and individual point data information at the same time. A user does not have to download gigabytes of data anymore, but has a flexible on-demand service to access data. Data access can further directly be integrated into custom processing routines.

Despite the potential a WCS for meteorological data offers, the standards-based modelling of these entails challenges and reveals some boundaries of the current Web Coverage Service 2.0 standard. Challenges range from valid semantic data models for meteorological data to optimal and efficient data structures for a scalable web service. One of the main conclusions of the project is that Geospatial web services show new opportunities for large data organisations to disseminate data. The project also highlighted the challenges which need to be addressed before WCS can be used in an routine operational mode. Large data centres e.g. have to become more progressive towards the aoption of geo-data standard interfaces, while data users have to be trained how to benefit from geospatial web services most.

The presentation summarises the lessons-learned from the EarthServer-2 project. We will evaluate the potential and challenges of serving meteorological data via geospatial web services in general and a Web Coverage Service in specific. A specific focus will be set on the requirements a geospatial web service has to meet in order for data users and data organisation to benefit.