Collective memory, a wiki for tools, data and best practices

Core of the OpenEarth philosophy on tools is that by systematically storing, maintaining and disseminating data routines, I/O routines, engines, applications and programs at a central location, slowly but surely a toolbox emerges that acts as a collective memory to which analysts and end users naturally gravitate regarding their basic information needs. The long term focus of the approach promotes collaboration and the exchange of ideas across the artificial boundaries of projects - and even companies - which is beneficial for the coastal/marine/hydraulic and environmental research and engineering community as a whole.

History

The idea to collect, maintain and disseminate data, models and tools used by and developed at Delft Hydraulics was first put forward in 2003 by Mark van Koningsveld as quantitative support for, and in fact as an extension of, the Frame of reference method he developed during his PhD research. The initiative quickly merged with similar initiatives by Gerben de Boer and Fedor Baart that emerged at roughly that same time. This combination formed OpenEarthTools. Since then several contributors have added various pages to the wiki. Some of these are outdated and in 2024 it is decided to rewrite the entire wiki. 

OpenEarth tools is not only about tools, but evolved into a way of working where transparency, open source and open standards are main recipes for the current way of working. 

OpenEarth and other web-hosted tools collections

Related initiatives, which OpenEarth does not intend to compete with, come in a number of flavours: general purpose: Sourceforge, github (https://github.com/‎), dedicated to specific analysis languages: R-forge, Matlab Central, Python Package Index. In contrast to these initiatives, openearthtools is a collection dedicated to the application area of marine and coastal science and engineering. OET currently mainly hosts Matlab and python code.

Getting the OpenEarth tools

All openearthtools are stored in-the-cloud at the Deltares open source svn server svn.oss.deltares.nl that also host the open source numerical models Deft3D and Xbeach. Access is free but requires registration at the associated OSS (Open Source SoftWare) portal first: oss.deltares.nl. Here is some documentation on Joining OpenEarth or Getting started with the OpenEarthTools svn tools collection.



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