Using BEXIS 2 as efficient research data management system for the ATTO research project

The Amazon Tall Tower Observatory (ATTO) is a joint German-Brazilian project launched in 2009 and funded by MCTI (Brazil), BMBF (Germany) and the Max-Planck Society. ATTO is with its 325 m-tall tower, the associated research infrastructure and nearby scientific plots a unique multidisciplinary scientific research platform in a region of global significance. Located at the centre of the world’s largest continuous tropical forest, ATTO allows the observation of geo-/bio-/atmosphere interactions and their impact on climate, atmospheric chemistry, aerosols and clouds, and greenhouse gases in near-pristine conditions. From the data management point of view, the main challenge is to provide a functional platform for consortium-internal and -external transparency, traceability, and data exchange between a large number of institutions and research groups that are involved in the project in order to foster collaboration and maximize the output of the project. We use BEXIS 2, a flexible, interoperable and modular data management software, to provide efficient data management and exchange within such a large research consortium; and to allow long-term data archiving, documentation, secondary analysis, data reuse and accessibility for scientific community. We will present a showcase how the BEXIS 2 instance was modified in order to manage highly diverse data of a large research consortium ranging from i.e. micrometeorological data and greenhouse gas measurements as well as remote sensing data towards soil and water samples. The main focus will be on the flexibility of the metadata definition and the implementation of an automatic DOI registration, which allows BEXIS 2 to act as a data repository for the ATTO project.