Development of the KNMI Operational Data Center

KNMI provides weather, climate and seismological datasets to a varied group of customers. The number and size of the data volumes is increasing rapidly, with satellite data as important contributor. Currently, only parts of the datasets are directly available via the Internet, although their number will grow given new (inter) national regulations that require easy and standardized access to a range of environmental data. KODAC is the main strategy for the future spatial data infrastructure for all KNMI data, linking up with national and international efforts. It incorporates efficient data delivery to customers, both bulk data transfer and interactive data exploration and retrieval.

The KODAC system needs to be able to retrieve data from a myriad of current and future sources. The KODAC architecture facilitates this by using flexible backend services feeding the data products to the web frontend. By keeping metadata of the various data products in a database the KODAC system can determine which backend service it needs to call on to obtain a requested data product. KODAC communicates with its backend services by using SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol), also known as the "Web Services" protocol. The front-end is built using the state of the art Java Enterprise paradigms to ensure maximum scalability and code maintainability.

Metadata is of the utmost importance for archiving and discovering datasets. The structured description of their characteristics should follow de jure standards such that search procedures can be formalized. At KNMI, the ISO-19115 metadata standard has been accepted for assessing the contents of the metadata database for the KODAC system. This is in accordance with developments within WMO and the European Union (Inspire, Infrastructure for Spatial Information in Europe).
The proof of concept, consisting of a fully functional system, will be made available in an operational environment, thus embedding the system in the KNMI infrastructure. After this, more datasets and more functionality will be added to the KODAC system.