Spatiotemporal data is highly relevant within many research communities, offering valuable insights into how changes occur over time and space. NFDI4Biodiversity is one such community, where, e.g., understanding how changes to the environment of different species over time correlate with changes to their spatial distribution, is an essential task. Performing these sorts of analyses involving heterogeneous datasets from various sources requires harmonizing them and making them easily reusable for research experts, which is one of the core promises of a FAIR research data infrastructure. This has been our motivation for developing our VAT tool, which is already integrated into NFDI4Biodiversity today.

However, the VAT design is not limited to a specific application context but allows integration into other environments by implementing common OGC standards for spatiotemporal data exchange. In addition, the VAT tool specifically focuses on enabling non-technical users to derive new insights from spatiotemporal data by offering an easy, interactive, and exploratory user experience. At its core, all data processing steps are modeled as workflows, which are dynamic and highly reusable. They enable users to define and execute processing pipelines in arbitrary time and space contexts. The VAT tool offers a curated catalog of predefined workflows to simplify the construction of complex analyses. The workflow concept additionally facilitates the use of machine learning. Training data can be preprocessed by constructing a workflow whose output is used as input to a machine learning model training process. Trained models can then again be applied to data within workflows. This talk will give you an overview of what is possible with the VAT tool today and where it is headed in the future.

This talk is held in English.

The HeFDI Data Week 2025 offers a total of twelve inputs and workshops on data management over three days - this time with a focus on artificial intelligence and data, legal issues and disciplinary tools! The events are accessible online and free of charge. They are aimed at researchers, teaching staff, students and anyone who wants to learn more about FAIR data and code, practical tools and available services. The latest developments and associated challenges will be presented and discussed with service providers and users alike.

#Digitaltag