What is OpenEarth?
OpenEarth is a free and open source initiative to deal with Data, Models and Tools in earth science & engineering projects, currently mainly marine & coastal. In current practice, research, consultancy and construction projects commonly spend a significant part of their budget to setup some basic infrastructure for data and knowledge management. Most of these efforts disappear again once the project is finished. As an alternative to these ad-hoc approaches, OpenEarth aims for a more continuous approach to data & knowledge management. It provides a platform to archive, host and disseminate high quality data, state-of-the-art model systems and well-tested tools for practical analysis. Through this project-superseding approach, marine & coastal engineers and scientists can learn from experiences in previous projects and each other. This may lead to considerable efficiency gains, both in terms of budget and time. The following papers describe the OpenEarth approach in more detail: Terra et Aqua, 2013, NCK 2012 & WODCON 2010.
Within the OpenEarth community two types of users can be distinguished: 1) #OpenEarth users and 2) #OpenEarth developers.
OpenEarth users
OpenEarth users are particularly interested in using data, models and tools that have become available through OpenEarth for project purposes. For these users easily installable software packages as well as user manuals and tutorials are available in the OpenEarth Product Suite. An explanation on how to get access to data is given in the Getting started section.
OpenEarth developers
OpenEarth developers participate actively in the dissemination of new datasets and model systems and the development & improvement of all kinds of handy tools. If you wanna be an OpenEarth developer, please follow this link to learn about the five easy steps to become an OpenEarth developer.
About us
OpenEarth is, amongst others, supported by the concerted effort of professionals from Deltares, Delft University of Technology's Hydraulic Engineering and Environmental Fluid Mechanics sections, Van Oord Dredging and Marine Contractors, Arcadis-Alkyon and UNESCO-IHE. Please visit our OpenEarth LinkedIn group to see the more than 400 members. More background information on OpenEarth can be found here.