UC2 data standard
The UC2 data standard was developed in the Urban Climate Under Change (UC2) project to organize urban climate model and observation data in a consistent, reusable way. It is a project-level convention built on top of netCDF and CF-compatible metadata practice rather than a completely separate format.
Main goals
- support consistent storage and administration of project data
- facilitate tool development and automated processing
- handle both model output and measured data
- support workflows for urban climate applications such as PALM-4U
- make project data easier to transfer and reuse beyond the original consortium
Core conventions
- netCDF is used as the base data format
- structure can be represented in common data language
- CF conventions provide the shared metadata backbone, with project-specific extensions where necessary
- ASCII-only character arrays were used for broad compatibility in the original project context
Why it matters
The UC2 standard is a good example of how general open-science principles become concrete in a working project. FAIR data practice often depends on conventions like this, where files, metadata, naming, and workflow assumptions are standardized enough for multiple teams and tools to interoperate.
Metadata and provenance
Project standards like UC2 are not only about file syntax. They also depend on clear metadata and versioning. Attributes such as source, version, conventions, dependencies, and institution provide the descriptive and workflow context that makes a dataset reusable.
That is why the UC2 standard sits naturally between Metadata, Provenance, and technical file standards.
In this garden
This note represents the project-facing side of the open-science branch, where FAIR principles are translated into day-to-day climate-data practice.
See also: ATMODAT, FAIR, Metadata, Provenance, netCDF, CF conventions, MOC Open Science Data and Knowledge Graphs