A tool to meet FAIR principles
=====================================================

`FAIR principles <https://www.go-fair.org/fair-principles>`_ refer to the guidelines to optimise the reuse of data, 
both for humans and computers. GEOP4TH can be a valuable help to meet the **I**\ nteroperable and **R**\ eusable components of FAIR. 

Unlike the **F**\ indibility and **A**\ ccessibility components, that mainly rely on the storage and access infrastructure, 
the **I**\ nteroperable and **R**\ eusable components are rather intrinsic to the data themselves. Data preprocessing can therefore 
greatly contribute to reach these goals. 

GEOP4TH is particularly fitted to assist in the use of open data formats, such as |netCDF| 
or |GeoTIFF|. These data formats are `very appropriate <https://sist.pages.in2p3.fr/webinaire_netcdf_2024/introduction.html>`_ to match 
the FAIR principles thanks to their usual compacity, international conventions, and large communities guaranteeing the perennity of the format, 
but their main downside is their complexity that requires to learn about the format as well as the tools for manipulating it. GEOP4TH provides an 
easy way to bypass this complexity. 

For example, the **R**\ eusable component includes the
`R1.3 point <https://www.go-fair.org/fair-principles/r1-3-metadata-meet-domain-relevant-community-standards>`_: « |nbsp| (Meta)data meet 
domain-relevant community standards |nbsp| ». In Hydrology, the most appropriate convention for |netCDF| is the `Climate and Forecast (CF) 
convention <https://cfconventions.org/conventions.html>`_, which defines a standardised common way of |netCDF| organisation, documentation and vocabulary. GEOP4TH already includes most 
of the CF guidelines, and will completely integrate them in the near future. GEOP4TH is also intended to follow the
`OGC standards <https://www.ogc.org/fr/standards/geotiff>`_ for |GeoTIFF| format.


.. |netCDF| raw:: html

  <abbr title="network Common Data Form">netCDF</abbr>
  
.. |GeoTIFF| raw:: html

  <abbr title="Geospatial Tagged Image File Format">GeoTIFF</abbr>
  

.. # define a hard line break for HTML
.. |br| raw:: html

   <br>

.. |nbsp| unicode:: 0xA0 
   :trim: