2021-ClimateArchive

Overview

The goal of this project is to give researchers easy access to complex climate data with the climatearchive.org web
application as a front end and our software solution as the backend to provide access to the data. The website
currently visualises the research data in 3D, however quantitative access to the underlying data is needed to improve
interdisciplinary research. We will provide a solution which filters the database and produces smaller data subsets
which could then be downloaded/visualised from the browser.

Stakeholders

The typical stakeholders for this project will be researchers, or other people who may be interested in the data,
who may not be particularly tech savy.

Researchers
Individulas interested in the data

Sebastian
Coders (us)

User Stories

A researcher / individual interested in the data, I should be able to:
    -select a point on the globe on the alreadyprovided climate change model in order to extract point data for a selected location and time period.
    -view and compare graphs generated from comparing these data points.
    -download datasets generated from certain parameters
    -share datasets/graphs generated at specific points with other individuals

Note: we are mainly working on our client's private repository to add features to climatearchive.org and on a backend server to provide access to underlying climate data.

Usage

The server can be downloaded from the releases tab or built from source.

Building from source

Download the source code using

git clone https://github.com/spe-uob/2021-ClimateArchive.git

Compile into a jar file using

cd 2021-ClimateArchive

mvn package -DskipTests

This will save climateArchive.jar in the target directory

Running

First place climateArchive.jar into your chosen directory.

Create a config folder using in the same directory with mkdir config

Create the file application.properties in the config file

In this file enter the config

data_location=<path to climate data>

Add additional config

The server can now be started by running java -jar climateArchive.jar

Running as a service

To have the program running in the background on a linux machine you can use a service. These instructions are only tested on ubuntu but should work on other distributions, maybe with some small modifications

Create the file /lib/systemd/system/climate_archive.service and paste the following

[Unit]
Description=climate archive data api

[Service]
WorkingDirectory=<path to climateArchive.jar>
ExecStart=java -jar climateArchive.jar
User=<user>

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Now the service can be started by running

systemctl daemon-reload
systemctl start climate_archive.service

Adding models to the server

The server can only access models which have been added to the database. They can be added through the commandline using the command

java -jar climateArchive.jar --add_models --models=<models to add seperated by ",">

The separator used can be changed by setting the model_sep property in application.properties

Model template formats are taken from the model_templates property in application.properties with the template fulfilling the most fields being picked.

Templates should be in the following format

<Climate_Archive_Model_Template>/climate/<Climate_Archive_Field_Template>.nc

<Climate_Archive_Model_Template> will be replaced with the name of the model and <Climate_Archive_Field_Template> will be replaced with the field being requested

The filled in template will be added to the data_location path when fetching data

Additionally:

<Climate_Archive_Model_Template> is the model name with case as given from the command line
<CLIMATE_ARCHIVE_MODEL_TEMPLATE> is the model in upper case
<climate_archive_model_template> is the model in lower case
<Climate_Archive_Field_Template> is the field with case as given
<CLIMATE_ARCHIVE_FIELD_TEMPLATE> is the field in upper case
<climate_archive_field_template> is the field in lower case

The separator used can be changed by setting the model_templates_sep property in application.properties

Examples of templates

For example given that the model is Model and the field is Example using the following template

<Climate_Archive_Model_Template>/climate/<climate_archive_model_template>.pdcl<Climate_Archive_Field_Template>.nc

The filled in template will be

Model/climate/model.pdclExample.nc

For a more extreme example given that the model is Model and the field is Example using the following template

<Climate_Archive_Model_Template>/<CLIMATE_ARCHIVE_MODEL_TEMPLATE>/<climate_archive_model_template>/<Climate_Archive_Field_Template>/<CLIMATE_ARCHIVE_FIELD_TEMPLATE>/<climate_archive_field_template>.nc

The filled in template will be

Model/MODEL/model/Example/EXAMPLE/example.nc

This will then be added to the data location path when reading the file

Config

The following properties can be specified in the config file.

Property	Description	Default Value
data_location	The path to the folder containing all models	./data
model_separator	The separator used for splitting the list of models (regex)	,
allowed_cors	A list of origins which can call the api. They must be seperated by the allowed_cors_separator and formatted according to the spring documentation	*
allowed_cors_separator	The separator used for splitting the list of origins in allowed_cors (regex)	,
server.port	The port that will be used by the api	8080
model_templates	The list of model templates which should be used when adding new models	<Climate_Archive_Model_Template>/<Climate_Archive_Field_Template>.nc
model_templates_separator	The separator used for splitting the list of model templates (regex)	,
fields	The list of fields the server will use to fetch model .nc files	ann,jan,feb,mar,apr,may,jun,jul,aug,sep,oct,nov,dec
fields_separator	The separator used for splitting the list of fields (regex)	,
variables	The list of variables the server fetches for each model	temp_mm_1_5m,precip_mm_srf
variables_separator	The separator used for splitting the list of variables (regex)	,

When making any changes to the config file any instances of the server must be restarted for the changes to have any effect. If using a linux service this can be done by running `systemctl restart <service name>`

HTTPS

To enable HTTPS on the server a security certificate must be created. This must be saved in a keystore in the same directory as the .jar file.

Then in the application.properties file set the following properties:

Property	Description
server.ssl.key-store-type	The format of the keystore
server.ssl.key-store	The path to the keystore containing the certificate
server.ssl.key-store-password	The password for the keystore
server.ssl.key-alias	The alias mapped to the certificate
server.ssl.key-password	The password used to generate the certificate
server.ssl.enabled	Whether to enable https. Set this to `true`

This will now block all requests using HTTP and require HTTPS

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