The South African Environmental Observation Network (SAEON) is mandated by the Department of Science, Technology and Innovation (DSTI) to preserve and provide access to earth and environmental observation data for South Africa. As part of fulfilling this mandate, the uLwazi Node plays a key role in developing and maintaining the cyberinfrastructure, tools, and systems that enable data discovery, access, and long-term stewardship.
Publication, discovery, dissemination, and preservation of global change data in South Africa for the support of innovative research and evidence-based decision making to bring about social, economic and environmental benefits.
SAEON’s infrastructure is based on standardised metadata and discovery tools, with FAIR principles embedded into SAEON’s systems and data curation procedures.
uLwazi (meaning ‘knowledge’) curates data and develops open data systems and applications, which are distributed on an Open Data Platform (ODP). The ODP directly supports and allows users free access to and visualisation of spatial and non-spatial data. This includes impacts of global change on human and natural environments. Open Data refers to data that is freely available, can be accessed, used and/or changed and republished by anyone.
The SAEON Open Data Platform (ODP) offers the ability to store metadata and datasets in a secure environment that protects the intellectual property rights of the data providers. Metadata must accompany all datasets that are archived or published in the SAEON ODP. To facilitate search and discovery, all metadata will be publicly accessible.
