CARBON STORAGE OPEN DATA GEOSPATIAL CURATION AND ACCESSIBILITY

Rapidly growing interest in carbon storage opportunities across the globe have increased demand and need for a diverse range of earth systems data, often from various sources, sizes, and accuracy. This high demand has stressed the need to improve and optimize how these large data resources are accessed and shared. Making the catalog of available carbon storage data and research products easier to visualize and explore is essential for accelerating the re-use, collaboration, and extraction of data-driven insights essential for implementing carbon storage and addressing climate-related goals.

The U.S. Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory has been developing a spatial data visualization platform, EDX Spatial, that is interoperable with their data repository, the Energy Data eXchange® (EDX). EDX hosts thousands of data resources, including those from DOE-funded projects and outside authoritative sources, many of which have the potential to be represented in geospatial formats. Large-scale mapping applications such as EDX Spatial provide opportunities for researchers and industry professionals to preview where data has been historically collected for initial assessment and prioritization. Since 2018, over 14 terabytes of data resources have been aggregated, cataloged, and published into the Carbon Storage Open Database on a semi-annual basis, requiring regular data curation and cataloguing endeavors to organize new spatial resources for effective display.

When displaying spatial data in digital mapping applications, there is a need to ensure that symbology conforms to current standards to support accessibility and interoperability across use-case applications. However, there are multiple standards provided for digital mapping and symbology, and displaying the volume of geo-data resources available on EDX for carbon storage research has increased the need to expand and customize available standards. This presentation will detail efforts to curate and develop symbology standards for data within the Carbon Storage Open Database, hosted within EDX Spatial, to increase accessibility and user comprehension of the hundreds of data resources included in the collection.