CLIPC: from Big Data Science to Big Data Decisions

<p>The CLIPC (Climate Information Platform for Copernicus) has build a demonstration data infrastructure and portal for the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S).</p> <p>The infrastructure is founded on a comprehensive approach to managing data and documentation, using global domain independent standards where possible. An extensive thesaurus of terms provides both a robust and flexible foundation for data discovery services and accessible definitions to support users. It is, of course, essential to provide information to users through an interface which reflects their expectations rather than the intricacies of abstract data models. CLIPC has reviewed user engagement activities from other collaborative European projects, conducted user polls, interviews and meetings and is now entering an evaluation phase in which users discuss newfeatures and options in the portal design.</p> <p>The CLIPC portal will provide access to raw climate science data and climate impact indicators derived from that data. The portal needs the flexibility to support access to extremely large datasets as well as providing means to manipulate data and explore complex products interactively. Scientists are becoming accustomed to dealing with vast data archives: the challenge for CLIPC is to make the data accessible to those working in decision support and, as an essential precursor, to improve the sharing of data between specialities within climate science.