The UGOS Data Catalog is an implementation of CKAN that organizes and publishes data relevant to hydrodynamic modelers. It includes user interfaces to facilitate data search in the repository and, importantly, a link to download the data. The system also includes APIs to help establish links to other cyberinfrastructure.

This Quick User documentation will focus only on the online user interfaces and guides users on how to efficiently use the facility. Separate documentation is available for the system's built-in APIs, designed for advanced users.

Upper right corner of the interface is the system menu (Figure 1).

There is another hyperlink (Log in) above the horizontal menu. This is reserved for data providers and will be discussed in a separate documentation.

Finding Data

Figure 1 (below) is the first user interface. Data can be searched for either via a generic search term (1) or by using the data classifications to narrow the selections (2). Data identified in the catalog are classified as ADCP, Drifters, Floats, Gliders, HF Radars, MODIS, PIES/cPIES, ROCIS/AXBT, SWOT, and Model Products. This list can change as the system matures.

Figure 1. Startup user interface of the UGOS Data Catalog.

If you click on any of the icons, it will search the collection and filter the list using the data type. The effect is the same as entering a search term.

The search can also be done by filtering the collection by organization. In the system menu, clicking on the ‘Organization’ will open an interface that lists all organizations that contributed data to the catalog (Figure 2).

Figure 2. User interface that introduces the organizations that contributed their data to the catalog.

To further filter the list (Figure 3, (1)), you can continue to add search terms until the data has been located. The resulting list can be sorted using the ‘Order By’ option (2) by Relevance, Name Ascending, Name Descending, or Last Modified. The ‘Relevance’ is the default. There are cases where you want to filter data using the geographical space. The data can be filtered using the geo-search facility (3) to list only data that are in the user-defined area (Figure 4). The facetted search terms (4) can also be used to filter the list further.

Figure 3. The user interface for filtered data after the search.
Figure 4. User interface to define the geographical zone of interest.
Figure 5. The relevant links to download the data or to access the details (metadata) of the data before downloading.

Anatomy of the Dataset Page

The data landing page (Figure 6) provides, among others, details to: (1) where the data can be downloaded from, (2) the organization that provided the data, (3) the geographical area where the data was collected from, and (4) metadata about the data.

Figure 6. The dataset landing page.

Downloading Data

Care should be taken when downloading data via this web interface or via the API call for machine-to-machine interactions. The requested data may be large and will take time to download, and very often, downloading a series of data can choke the network or fill the available hard drive.

NASA data often require authentication. Please make sure that you have registered to download SWOT and Swath data from NASA repositories.