High-Value Data in Practice: Why Availability Is Not Enough

High-Value Datasets (HVDs) are a key component of the European Open Data Directive and aim to improve access to public sector information through open licensing, machine-readable formats, APIs, and harmonized metadata. While these principles promise more interoperable and reusable data, practical challenges remain for Earth System Science (ESS) applications. Using urban climate adaptation as an example, this poster illustrates how meteorological observations, urban geometry, land cover, and socio-economic data are integrated into scientific workflows for modelling and decision support. It highlights the gap between policy expectations and operational reality, including challenges related to data discovery, access, interoperability, metadata quality, and workflow integration. The poster further demonstrates how NFDI4Earth can help bridge this gap by supporting data discovery services, facilitating collaboration between data providers and users, promoting interoperability, and developing recommendations and best practices based on real-world use cases. The overarching message is that the main bottleneck is no longer data availability, but the effective integration and reuse of data within reproducible scientific workflows. Based on the findings, the poster concludes with practical recommendations for both data providers and scientists to improve the usability and impact of High-Value Datasets in Earth System Science applications.