The collection and usage of sensor data are crucial in science, enabling the evaluation of experiments and validation of numerical simulations. This includes sensor maintenance metadata, e.g. calibration parameters and maintenance time windows. Enriched sensor data allows scientists to assess data accuracy, reliability, and consistence through Quality Assurance and Quality Control (QA/QC) processes. Today, maintenance metadata is often collected but not readily accessible due to its lack of digitalization. Such audit logs are commonly stored in analogue notebooks, which poses challenges regarding accessibility, efficiency, and potential transcription errors.
In MOIN4Herbie (Maintenance Ontology and audit log INtegration for Herbie), we will address the obvious lack of digitized maintenance metadata in Helmholtz’s research areas Information and Earth and Environment.
To this end, MOIN4Herbie will extend the electronic lab notebook Herbie – developed at the Hereon Institute of Metallic Biomaterials - with ontology-based forms to deliver digital records of sensor maintenance metadata for two pilot cases: For both the redeployed Boknis Eck underwater observatory and the already implemented Tesperhude Research Platform we will establish a digital workflow from scratch.
This will lead to a unified and enhanced audit of sensor maintenance metadata, and thus more efficient data recording, the empowerment of technicians to collect important metadata for scientific purpose, and last but not least improvement and facilitation of the scientific evaluation and use of sensor data.