Logo: Climate Change Centre Austria (CCCA)

Data Centre

Transition from the CCCA Data Centre to the GeoSphere Austria Datahub

The CCCA Data Centre (CCCA-DZ) was founded in 2015 to establish a national archive for climate-relevant research data. Since it went live, the CCCA-DZ has played a significant role in storing and managing scientific data across CCCA's research areas. In particular, through the data backup mandate for ACRP projects between CCCA and the Climate and Energy Fund, the CCCA-DZ has played a key role in providing and securing data for ACRP projects.

With an ageing infrastructure, continuously evolving requirements in the area of data infrastructure, and limited funding available, it's unfortunately no longer possible to keep the current CCCA-DZ web presence running in the long term. Despite these constraints, it will continue to be possible for the CCCA community to make research data publicly and freely accessible in the future.

As presented at the CCCA General Assembly on 14 March 2024, among other occasions, the establishment of GeoSphere Austria in 2023 — along with its statutory mandate to build and operate a high-quality data infrastructure on a long-term basis, and its willingness to open this infrastructure to the (climate) research community — means that the GeoSphere Austria Datahub now provides a long-term, secure data infrastructure. This data infrastructure is intended to serve as the central platform for storing, managing, and sharing research data across CCCA's research areas, and to take on the responsibilities of the CCCA-DZ. Through modern technologies and open standards, the GeoSphere Austria Datahub will offer an efficient and secure solution that meets the needs of the research community and makes it easier to access valuable data.

All data previously available through the CCCA Data Centre has already been migrated to the GeoSphere Austria data infrastructure. Data providers were asked to review the data and metadata of their respective datasets and to flag any desired changes (this option remains available). The new datasets have been assigned DOIs and can be found via the CCCA section of the GeoSphere Datahub (https://data.hub.geosphere.at/group/ccca-daten). 

As the continuation of data services offered by CCCA via the GeoSphere Austria Datahub is secured on a long-term basis, the CCCA Board decided at its meeting on 19 June 2024 that the current CCCA Data Centre web presence (https://data.ccca.ac.at/) will be taken offline on 31 August 2024. Any comments on this matter can be sent to datenzentrum@ccca.ac.at until 31 July 2024.

Anyone who'd like to upload data to the GeoSphere Austria Datahub in the future is welcome to get in touch with Matthias Schwarz (matthias.schwarz@ccca.ac.at) or the GeoSphere Austria Datahub Team via the contact form (https://data.hub.geosphere.at/contact).

The collaboration between the GeoSphere Austria Datahub and CCCA will continue to be coordinated and organised, among other things, through the CCCA Data Centre Working Group. Anyone who'd like to get actively involved in shaping the data services is warmly invited to participate in the CCCA Working Group Data Centre (https://ccca.ac.at/netzwerkaktivitaeten/ccca-arbeitsgruppen/ag-datenzentrum). 

Responsibilities and tasks of the Data Centre (see §4 CCCA Rules of Procedure)

  • Operation and maintenance of the CCCA research data repository (hardware and software)
  • Ensuring the content, outputs, open access, usability, and (long-term) availability, as well as processing of the data
  • Substantive support for the Board
  • Projects and supervision of working groups commissioned by the Board

The CCCA data server provides a central national archive for relevant climate data and information, and secures access to climate research-relevant data as well as models, research resources, model outputs, and literature. The aim is to promote interoperability and collaboration between different scientific and research communities in order to reduce data redundancy and data loss. One of the most relevant climate models for the CCCA community emerged from the ÖKS 15 project – Climate Scenarios for Austria. This project simulated the future development of precipitation, temperature, and further climate indices on the basis of observational datasets through to the end of the 21st century, and published results for different regions of Austria. An update and redesign of the climate scenarios originally developed in 2015 is currently being pursued. In addition, the GeoClim project is helping to ensure the expansion of the CCCA Data Centre, among other things, in order to promote internationally competitive computing and storage capacity for monitoring and modelling.