Met Office Copernicus Service - Co-ordination of Data Rescue Services – Senior Software Engineer(s)

Tender description

The Copernicus Climate Change Service is part of the Copernicus Programme, which is an EU Programme managed by the European Commission (EC) and implemented in partnership with the Member States, the European Space Agency (ESA), the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT), the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), EU Agencies and Mercator Océan. The Programme is aimed at de¬veloping a set of European information services based on satellite Earth Observation and in-situ (non-space) data. The Copernicus Climate Change Service is designed to respond to changes in the environment and society associated with climate change. The service will provide information for monitoring and predicting climate change and help to support adaptation and mitigation strategies. The Service This service addresses Data Rescue through the collection and processing of In Situ Observations. The Service will build a new, integrated, web-portal to access global data, software, and information produced by the Service. The portal will be linked to the existing WMO I-DARE portal, but with many more facilities as a result of it being meld together with the data rescue registry begun by the EU FP7 ERA-CLIM2 project and enhanced by this new C3S Data Rescue activity. It will be developed and maintained by software engineering specialists (Scientific Software Engineers [SSEs]). For this Service, new tools will be organised in a small database that allows browsing and searching for particular tools. The dissemination of tools falls into five different categories: Tools offered as exe-files and/or source code via C3S, on-line tools (appropriately licensed) offered on existing websites of Service members or their projects, links to and monitoring of free tools hosted and provided by others, R-packages offered via CRAN mirror sites, and templates (typically as Excel files). These tools will be fully tested, highly portable and fully supported. What is the role? The Met Office is looking to procure software engineering specialists (Scientific Software Engineers [SSEs]). To develop and deploy provide Operational Support to the Climate Registry portal that will be deployed on either a cloud or a managed IT platform, will be actively managed and backed up and therefore resilient to software problems, data corruption, and hardware failure. Portal source, configuration and content will be kept under version control, and will be maintained for the duration of the Service at the highest standards available. 2.3 Objectives of this Call: Task 1: Design and implementation of a “global data rescue activity database” containing detailed information about past, current and planned data rescue projects. For each project, the database must contain (or be linked to) all available information about the data being rescued, such as locations, time and frequency of observation, instrumentation, observed parameters, station/platform information, quality aspects, images, etc. Detailed specification of initial content and potential future content for the database will be provided by the Met Office and/or its subcontractors. The database must be designed to support a variety of functions and services, as outlined below and further specified by the Met Office. Task 2: Design and implementation of a “C3S data rescue portal” giving access to the database. The portal must be designed as a fully integrated component of the C3S website. The portal will be visible to all users of the C3S website. Users must be able to search and visualise the content of the data rescue activity database. The portal shall provide a “registry service” for communities involved in data rescue activities, where they can submit information about their projects for inclusion in the data rescue activity database. Details of procedures/governance aspects of the registry service will be provided by the Met Office. Task 3: Any software development related to “data rescue support services” to be developed by the Met Office and/or its subcontractors. This includes development of tools and facilities to support submission of newly digitized data records to managed climate data archives, such as ICOADS, ISPD, C3S_311a Lot 2. It also includes software (re)development as needed to support wider use of existing community tools for imaging, digitizing and quality control of digitised data records, e.g. by developing a “data rescue toolbox” within the CDS environment. An initial indication of the type and variety of such tools will be provided by the Met Office. Additional requirements: • Frequent engagement with the data rescue community as represented by the Met Office and its subcontractors. • Technical coordination with other Lots (2,3,4) of C3S_311a in order to harmonise as much as possible the data models, metadata definitions, tools and services related to in situ observations. • Full integration with the Climate Data Store: The data rescue database and associated software shall be designed to be hosted in the Climate Data Store infrastructure. Where possible, all services and tools to be developed shall be integrated within the CDS Toolbox component. • Consistency with I-DARE: The WMO I-DARE web portal will retain its own identity; however it is a requirement that any overlapping content (e.g. high-level information about WMO-sponsored data rescue projects) be consistent. This will require engagement with KNMI (which hosts I-DARE) and possible development of some synchronisation software. • Technical documentation and user guides shall be provided for all implemented tools and services. What are the Deliverables expected We would expect the first prototype version of the Portal to be available by December 2017, which includes software for searching the Global registry and a Metadata submission tool. The submission tool must also have some mechanism to QC the data uploaded There must be an output Tools for submitting digitised metadata sets to international global data archives Both the tools and portal must have technical documentation, including user guides and the provision of user support What is the timeframe? Expecting Contracts to start September 2017 and end in December 2018 with the option of a 2 year extension Keywords: Senior Software Engineer(s)