EnviroHack 2015 kicks off

NERC's Head of Science Information and Data Management Coordinator, Mark Thorley, opened the NERC EnviroHack today.

This 'hackathon' event provides an exciting opportunity to collaborate and create value from environmental data sets. EnviroHack was organised by the British Oceanographic Data Centre (BODC) and the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (CEH).

Mark Thorley kicks off the NERC EnviroHack ©

Data collected by environmental scientists are being made available for 'hackers' to explore in new ways. The participants, including Justin Buck, Lise Quesnel and Chris Wood from BODC, will be using 'Linked Data' — a means of using web technology to link separate but related data sets.

The event, facilitated by Red Ninja Studios and supported by Knowledge Transfer Network (KTN), runs from Friday 27 February until Saturday 28 February at the Digital Catapult Centre, London. The raw data for this event comes from: BODC, CEH, the British Geological Survey (BGS), UK Data Archive, Plymouth Marine Laboratory (PML) and the Met Office.

BODC data encompasses measurements made from research vessels, while both underway and at sampling stations; from moorings deployed either on the sea surface, in the water column or on the sea bed; and from land-based stations recording sea level. Over 60,000 data series have been provided; each series consists of a number of data cycles. Data categories include

Dr Clare Postlethwaite, MEDIN Coordinator, presenting at the NERC Envirohack ©

• Acoustics
• Bathymetry and topography
• Currents — horizontal and vertical velocity, Lagrangian currents and water transport rates
• Meteorology — Radiosonde, Met. stations and data buoys
• Optical properties — pigments, turbidity, irradiance
• Sea level
• Water column temperature and salinity
• Water column chemistry — nutrients, carbons, oxygen
• Waves — statistics and spectra

BODC's metadata (information about data) are available as 5* Linked Data from a SPARQL endpoint. These metadata include links to a download service where the data they describe are available under licence.

Throwing ideas around
at the Digital Catapult Centre

Lise Quesnel (BODC developer)
presenting at the NERC Envirohack ©