Integrating Research Data Management into Geographical Information Systems

TL;DR

This paper presents an integrated approach to research data management within GIS-based ocean mesh generation, enabling reproducibility and proper citation through online repositories.

Contribution

It introduces the integration of research data management into QMesh, facilitating mesh publication and data sharing via PyRDM with persistent identifiers.

Findings

Enhanced reproducibility of ocean meshes

Streamlined publication process for GIS data

Improved citation and data tracking

Abstract

Ocean modelling requires the production of high-fidelity computational meshes upon which to solve the equations of motion. The production of such meshes by hand is often infeasible, considering the complexity of the bathymetry and coastlines. The use of Geographical Information Systems (GIS) is therefore a key component to discretising the region of interest and producing a mesh appropriate to resolve the dynamics. However, all data associated with the production of a mesh must be provided in order to contribute to the overall recomputability of the subsequent simulation. This work presents the integration of research data management in QMesh, a tool for generating meshes using GIS. The tool uses the PyRDM library to provide a quick and easy way for scientists to publish meshes, and all data required to regenerate them, to persistent online repositories. These repositories are assigned unique identifiers to enable proper citation of the meshes in journal articles.