ABSTRACT The amount of research data in Earth System Modelling is growing fast, and so is the demand for solutions to keep data and workflows archived according to the FAIR principles—findable, accessible, interoperable and re‐usable. In practice, numerous simulations are carried out during model development and tuning, in which different model versions or parameter values are tested. Often, this approach leads to intransparent workflows and legacy data sets that lack findability and re‐usability criteria. Here, we present a strategy to facilitate the FAIRness of the active model testing workflow, starting with making existing legacy data sets findable and re‐usable retrospectively, and automating FAIR workflows for subsequent data analysis and further model development using a semantic data managment framework. We provide a general strategy, specific use case and technical implementation of the required steps, i.e., inventorisation, integration, documentation and analysis using an example simulation legacy data set. The technical solution is implemented based on the open source semantic research data management system LinkAhead. The crawler in the LinkAhead framework automatically extracts relevant parameters for subsequent data analysis. A bidirectional connection of the database to a Jupyter Notebook enables seamless access of data and metadata through semantic queries, as well as storage of data analysis scripts and outputs linked to the original data in a FAIR manner. A major advantage of this approach is its flexibility: the crawler itself leaves the original data file structure untouched and can iteratively be adapted to variations in the data structure. FAIR workflows in model development, especially at the group or project level, avoid unneccessary repetition of simulations due to lacking findability, therefore enhance efficiency of model development and reduce computation time and energy. Such data integration tools enhance sustainable management of research data in Geosciences.
Lennartz et al. (Thu,) studied this question.