Copernicus Data Store: UX and data experience

The Copernicus project is a European Union (EU)-funded initiative to develop a complex Earth observation system. It is managed by the European Commission in collaboration with the European Space Agency (ESA) and other organizations. Its objectives are to monitor the environment, assist in the management of natural disasters and humanitarian crises, and support sustainable development policies.

The European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) implements the Climate Change Service (C3S) and the Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS).

Client:

Copernicus ECMWF

Industry:

Public Sector

Year:

2022-2023

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The initial situation

Within Copernicus, we have the Climate Change Service and the Atmosphere Monitoring Service, which provide the Climate Data Store and Atmosphere Data Store as tools:: these provide free and easy access to the information collected by the program, realized through advanced technologies for data storage, management and distribution.

ECMWF needed to restructure the platform for managing, searching and downloading climate data to give it more functionality, performance and modernity. We developed it as part of a consortium of which B-Open is the lead partner.

Main Technical Activities

Front-end Development

Tools and Practices

Design Thinking

DevOps

Impact Mapping

User Story Mapping

Scrum

Implemented activities

The 20tab team was responsible for the front-end development of the New CDS (Climate and Atmosphere Data Store) platform, with features such as user and permission management, data and metadata search and visualization, and the ability to export data.

There was constant discussion with both the management side and the design and back-end components: we started with the initial analysis to understand the context and requirements. We conducted interviews with scientists, specialists, and experts in data use and design, which allowed us to connect with their experience and identify their needs.

We then moved on to developing the portal design, from UI kit to wireframes to mockups, for the Atmosphere Data Store and the Climate Data Store, to architecture design and configuration. From there we moved on to the actual development of the interfaces and then the configuration of the SSO (Single Sign On of users) access.

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Implemented technologies

Final result

What has been created is a comprehensive and user-friendly platform that allows users, both registered and unregistered, to enjoy the information and data it contains.

  • The project has the ambitious goal to avoid the use of a standard CMS and to base the management of each portal on configuration files. The generic configuration we designed and implemented allows each portal to display customized interfaces and content.
  • On the UX-UI side, we improved the user experience and usability of the portal by understanding the workflow of experts in the field through interviews. This information then guided the design of the platform interface.
  • The portal is generated using Next.js SSR technologies to ensure proper indexing: its metas are defined in the configurations and specifically support indexing using the JSON-LD format required by ECMWF. (https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/structured-data/intro-structured-data).
  • The portal has the ability to connect to ECMWF's central Single Sign On (SSO) service (Auth.js), again through configuration.

Specifically, among the developed features, the most complex, with several specific logics and behaviors, is the dataset download configuration form.

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We have ensured that the platform supports the application of combined filters, sorting of filtered results, and searching data by period. Finally, the platform is compliant with interoperability and open data standards.

New CDS is a key component of the Copernicus project, with a wide range of scientific, commercial and social applications. Our work has enabled us to make our contribution to the path towards sustainability, and we can only be proud of that.

The portal has been in beta since July 2024 and can be visited here.

This document was produced with funding by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are those of the author(s) only and the European Commission and ECMWF cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.