Urban Regeneration and the Environment (URGENT) Air Data and Software

Introduction

The NERC URGENT thematic programme was set up to integrate urban environmental research across the geological, ecological, freshwater and atmospheric sciences. It works in partnership with city authorities, industry and regulatory bodies. Deliverables from URGENT funded projects, that belong to Soil, Water, Ecology or Air Sciences, are archived at the most appropriate of the NERC data centres. In the case of Air Science projects, the data come to the BADC.

There are 13 air science projects within the URGENT Programme. The largest of these is the PUMA (Pollution in Urban Midlands Atmospheres) Consortium, which is the core of a group of five closely interrelated projects forming the PUMA Consortia. Its geographical scope is the West Midlands County (UK) and Birmingham City but its aim is to provide general insights into urban atmospheric problems.

The URGENT "Air" data are mainly in situ ground based measurements in urban and suburban areas but also include observations from aircraft, lab measurements and model results. Retrieved variables include atmospheric chemical species and aerosols, photolysis rates and meteorological/radiative parameters. Software, reports and recommendations to urban planners will also be issued.

The thematic programme began in 1998 and will last for 7 years. Projects have answered three successive calls for proposal.

Availability of data

URGENT In order to find out whether the URGENT Air archive includes the data you are looking for, you may check the archive contents or browse the URGENT Air Data Inventory, the URGENT Air Sites List or the various data summaries included in the Air Projects Documentation. You can also travel down the archive tree. To see the individual data files, however, you will need to have electronically signed the URGENT Data Protocol as part of the online dataset application (see Access to Data below).

PUMA

Data collected by the PUMA Consortium are also searchable by site name via a "clickable" Site Map:

Access to data and software

URGENT data are publicly available to users subject to the terms and conditions of the URGENT Data Protocol.

Data and image files sit in the URGENT Air Data Directory. To help the user in interpreting data file names, a dictionary of abbreviations used in URGENT Air data file names is supplied, as well as other information on file naming conventions. Software can be found in the URGENT Air Software Directory. Documents issued by the various air projects are in the URGENT Air Documentation Directory. To access any URGENT Air file, you will be prompted to log on with your personal user name and password. Files can be downloaded either via the WWW, or using ftp. If you need help on how to use one of these tools, please refer to our online Help section.

Data format

Field campaign or model data are in NASA Ames Format for Data Exchange, with some additional rules applying to URGENT Air data. Images are held in JPEG, GIF or other widely used image formats. For further detail, please read the BADC documentation on URGENT Air files format.

Data and metadata submission

Preliminaries

Project Lead Researchers are kindly reminded that they are required by NERC to produce

a Data Management Plan, to be sent to BADC;
a Quality Plan, to be sent to the Quality Assurance Manager (see the Who to contact Section below).

Templates of these two documents are available from the URGENT DMQA Documents online library.

Data providers are asked to register with BADC by completing the application form for access to URGENT data The online application includes the URGENT Data Protocol to be electronically signed. Applications are processed within a few days.

N.B.

All data (including images and software) must be accompanied by appropriate metadata. Please make sure your files comply with the required naming rules and format specifications (these, however, do not apply to software).
NASA Ames Formatted Data suppliers unfamiliar with NASA Ames format should definitely refer to the File Format Specifications BEFORE formatting their data. (Please pay attention to the URGENT specific rules). Before submission of NASA Ames data files, you may want to check them against the BADC NASA Ames File Checking Facility. If your data do not fit into any NASA Ames format, please contact BADC.

Uploading data
Data providers are asked to submit NASA Ames formatted data, images, software and their associated metadata to BADC via the BADC File Uploader. In the same way, additional documentation on the data, that would not be covered by the metadata standard, can be submitted to BADC.
Please have the files ready on your local machine. You will be prompted for your login name and password. Data and image files submitted to the archive will be automatically checked for compliance with URGENT file naming conventions and NASA Ames format specifications when they apply.

Services

Planning data - Campaign planning tools.
Trajectory Model - A WWW interface to compute air parcels trajectories based on ECMWF reanalyses.
Precalculated backward trajectories for the 1999 and 2000 PUMA campaigns can be found in the directory /badc/ecmwf-trj/data/puma/. You will need to have registered with BADC and have been granted access to this data set in order to view the trajectories.
Converting Ordnance Survey coordinates to/from longitude/latitude.
makeheader.f - An easy-to-use self-contained Fortran programme to build tailored NASA Ames file headers.
NASA Ames File Checking - A WWW based tool for checking whether files comply with the NASA Ames standard.
BADC File Uploader - A WWW based tool to upload data or image files into the BADC URGENT Air archive.
URGENT Air Data Inventory - Table of contents of the URGENT Air Data Archive, sorted by data category. Includes links to the archive.
URGENT Air Site Index - List of observation sites with links to data details.

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A clickable map of PUMA observation sites, with links to data summaries and to the archive.

Documentation

Documentation intended to both data providers and users is available on the following topics.

Links to further information

Further information about the URGENT Thematic Programme is available from

the URGENT Central Web Site – the "Science Structure" Section includes, in particular, abstracts of all individual projects;
the URGENT Home Page within the NERC Earth Science and Technology Research Programmes;
the URGENT Data Management and Quality Assurance (DMQA) WWW pages – in particular, the "DMQA Documents" Section provides online templates of Data Management and Quality Plans for use by principal investigators;
the URGENT Web Site at the University of Birmingham.

Citation

Date of Citation

Who to contact

Air science
If you have queries about these pages or difficulties submitting or accessing URGENT air data, you should contact BADC Support.
About scientific aspects of the Air Projects within URGENT, please contact the Air Projects Coordinator R. Harrison.
Other data centres (Water, Soil, Ecology sciences)
Data issued by the URGENT Water Science Projects are held at the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (CEH).
Data issued by the URGENT Soil Science Projects are held at the British Geological Survey (BGS).
Data issued by the URGENT Ecology Science Projects are held at the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (CEH).
URGENT Programme
About the URGENT Thematic Programme, please contact the Programme Scientific Coordinator G. Leeks.
The Scientific Superintending Officer for the URGENT Programme at NERC is N. Hollingworth.
Data management and quality assurance
For issues related to quality assurance, please contact the Quality Assurance Manager J. Cook.
The secretary of the URGENT Data Management and Quality Assurance (DMQA) Committee is R. Shaw.

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