On Friday 24 January, the plenary meeting of the NFDI4Earth Consortium took place on Telegrafenberg. Sixty experts from all over Germany participated. The consortium develops the national research data infrastructure for Earth system sciences. The current digital needs and demands of modern Earth System Science in research data management played a central role in the meeting. The aim is to provide researchers with efficient, open and - whenever possible - unrestricted access to all relevant Earth System data, in accordance with the FAIR principle for research data management (FAIR = Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable).

The consortium also aims to link innovations and findings generated from data across the boundaries of databases and disciplines. To this end, scientific data management and data analysis services must be enabled to provide sustainable access to digitised data bases.

NFDI4Earth is oriented on the digital requirements of researchers in Earth System Science. This includes a large number of disciplines and communities with the overall goal of understanding the subsystems of the Earth System and their interactions. Urgent global challenges (e.g. climate change, water scarcity, land use change, pollution, natural hazards) require intensified national and international interdisciplinary efforts. The links between different sub-disciplines and scientific approaches can be strengthened through joint research data management and knowledge extraction, which ultimately leads to a new quality of science.

NFDI4Earth builds on a consortium that brings together scientists from universities, universities of applied sciences, research institutions and public authorities with representatives of infrastructures.

The planning for the first NFDI4Earth conference on 14 and 15 May 2020 in Karlsruhe is underway.

Further information:
NFDI4Earth - National Research Data Infrastructure for Earth System Sciences