LRZ at the EGU 2025: Open data, open science

Great atmosphere, great weather and lots of interesting conversations: Together with partners from the German Aerospace Center (DLR) the Leibniz Supercomputing Centre (LRZ) participated in this year’s General Assembly of the European Geoscience Union (EGU) in Vienna – a worthwhile endeavour.

The atmosphere characterised by genuine interest in scientific exchange and– it was particularly pleasing to see how engaged the expert speakers were in their sessions and poster presentations, and how attentive the visitors were.

A major topic currently preoccupying the geoscience community is open data and open science. LRZ and DLR experts had a lot to offer for the audience. They shared useful tips and tricks for scientists and researchers on managing research data, and elaborated on the concept of 'terrabyte'. Interest in the high-performance data analytics platform – which is currently made available to selected research projects – was immense. The ability to efficiently analyze large data sets is a major concern for geoscientists and environmental researchers. Many of the visitors to the stand were therefore interested in finding out which pre-processed data and, above all, analysis tools are available on terrabyte. The platform offers practical solutions for this, especially for the analysis of Earth observation and satellite data, which could also be used in other research areas in future. Many conversations at the stand also focused on how to archive one's own research data according to the international FAIR principles, i.e. making it findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable.

In the EGU exhibition area, NFDI4Earth – a sub-organisation of Germany’s National Research Data Infrastructure NFDI – and the German Climate Computing Center (DKRZ) were located in the immediate vicinity of the LRZ and DLR stand. The jointly planned presentations in this neighbourhood were extremely well received. From research data management and FAIR Data to the development of new climate models and the use of supercomputing in the geosciences, the topics were discussed in depth with experts at all three stands. The great interest in these topics shows that the demand for computer-aided analysis methods and useful programs or tools in the geosciences continues to grow, as researchers want to provide solutions to pressing problems - and can do so better with their help.

EGU 2025 has shown once again that open data, strong computing power and a lively international exchange are the driving force behind the geosciences and environmental sciences. The LRZ is therefore also focusing its technical services and training on researchers in these disciplines.

More on the high-performance data-analytics platform terrabyte

More from EGU

Talks and panels at EGU25 (accessible via Copernicus account)