GET-IT, a software suite for easy, interoperable sharing of ecological data in the Long Term Ecological Research Network

The European Network for Long Term Ecological Research (LTER-Europe - http://www.lter-europe.net) is a network of more than 400 ecological interest sites [1] on which researchers carry out decadal-scale ecological investigations. Leading research institutions, universities and governmental agencies manage the sites and produce long term ecological data, which are planned with a long-term view, carefully considering data preservation along time, storage of specimens, locations of measurement. Sharing these data and related metadata can: (I) improve the comparability of ecological data collected around the world; (II) foster their (re)use outside the research context; (III) augment existing data collections and verify research results [2]. As already observed by different authors [3], [4], data and metadata sharing in LTER can be enabled by developing information technology (IT) infrastructures that allow to search, manage and share data on environmental change and ecosystems. IT infrastructures can be implemented with different architectures (by example they can be distributed, centralized, hybrid), software tools (proprietary or open source), and varying degrees of interoperability, from systemic to semantic [5]. Since 2012, IT facilities have been developed to enable LTER-Europe site managers to register, manage and share ecological information on sites, people (researchers involved) and data. The main facility developed has been Drupal Ecological Information System (DEIMS - https://data.lter-europe.net/deims) for managing and discovering data, sites and people by their metadata [6]; sharing of the data itself is offered via a centralized repository of excel sheets established during the LIFE+ Project EnvEurope [7]. This IT solution lacks in basic systemic interoperability for ecological data sharing, a gap that obstacles information exchange both inside the LTER-Europe Network and outside, towards other users and research networks. In fact, it does not conform to the rules established by the Infrastructure for Spatial Information in the European Community Directive (INSPIRE; [8]) for the sharing of environmental data and metadata through interoperable Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) standard services for data deployment and discovery. Besides sharing ecological data and metadata through OGC international standards and in accordance with the INSPIRE Directive, it should be also advisable to propose solutions targeted to ecological researchers, e.g. not requiring skilled IT personnel for (meta)data entry and management. A possible solution to face the aforementioned challenges, tested and adopted in the Italian Long Term Ecological Research Network (LTER-Italy) and in the Project European Long Term Ecosystem and Socio-Ecological Research Infrastructure (eLTER H2020 - http://www.lter-europe.net/lter-europe/projects/eLTER) is based on Geoinformation Enabling Toolkit StarterKit ® (GET-IT; [9]). In this short paper, we first briefly describe GET-IT, a software suite to share ecological data and metadata through OGC international standards and in accordance with the INSPIRE Directive. Then, in Section 3, we report a test of GET-IT to share ecological data and sensor metadata in LTER-Italy and we present the work in progress for the research infrastructure of eLTER by exploiting GET-IT. Section 4 describe the use of GET-IT in other disciplinary domains, present the results, the current issues, future works and it concludes the paper.