Uploading VMERGE Data

What is the VMERGE Data Portal?

The VMERGE Data Portal provides a safe data repository to share input or output datasets either within the project to other project partners or to distribute data to the wider scientific community.  The site has a fully customisable permissions system so you can make sure you share your data securely only with who you want.

The VMERGE Data Portal is building upon the platform originally designed for the FP7 EDENext project.  Rather than re-inventing the wheel VMERGE will take advantage of the secure platform that has already been develeoped while also gaining access to the existing baseline datasets for Europe such as climate and infrastructure data.  In return VMERGE will continue the running of the site beyond the end of the EDENext project which comes to an end at the end of 2014.

As well as the data specifically listed here, the  extensive range of spatial datasets available to VMERGE partners can be downloaded here. Additional datasets that now been made available to VMERGE partners include

  1. MODIS environmental and climatic indicators (LST, EVI, NDVI) at 1km resolution:  synoptic summaries for the period 2001 – 2012. Two year summaries are also available for 2001-3, 2005-8, 2009 -12 (Source: EDENext)
  2. Small Water Bodies to 2014. These are  dekadal 1km resolution estimates of  permanent and temporary water- for Africa (source VITO).
  3. MODIS vegetation phenology - annual dates of greening and senescence which can provide vegetation period (Source: Reverb)
  4. Travel time from the nearest town and associated friction surfaces (JRC)

New data are being continuously acquired and processed. Recent additions include

  1. ProbaV NDVI from January  to May 2014  for Africa North of  Equator
  2. SPAM2005 – harvested area of 40 crops at 10km resolution
  3. Chinese Global Land cover at 90m resolution
  4. Monthly and daily precipitation at 5km resolution (TAMSAT)
  5. Water courses (HYDRO1k)
  6. Gridded Population of The World 2010 at 1km resolution (CEISIN)

At the request of VMERGE partners, some critical layers have been improved by our collaborators, including:

  1. Camels at 1km resolution (produced by FAO, ILRI, ULB)
  2. Human population at 1km resolution  (produced by WorldPop, ULB)
  3. Relative Humidity at 5km resolution (produced for FP7 IDAMS)

For most datasets customised windows can be produced on request

Where can I find this data?

There is a lot of data already on the site.  Much of which is accessible to the wider general public.  Simply register on the site and browse the Data Archive.  If you are a VMERGE partner also don't forget to also email vmergedata.com your username after you register stating your name and institution.  This will enable us to also give you VMERGE partner permissions so you can download even more data.

VMERGE partners can also be given access to a Google spreadsheet listing all the datasets available to them from  the project and their partners.  If you do not already have access email VMERGEData@gmail.com and we can give you access to this spreadsheet.  We would also encourage you to add entries for any data that you can contribute to the project too.  Thank you!

I have data I would like to share - how do I do it?

VMERGE partners can email datasets they would like to make available to other members of the project or to the wider public.  We have a secure permissions based system so you can securely share your data with as many or as few partners you wish.  You can either email your data to VMERGEData@gmail.com or if it is too large or you would prefer to send it via FTP please just email us details of your data and we will get back to you.  A detailed description of the data is also useful as it will allow the data team to populate the metadata fields for you.

Summary steps to upload data:

  1. email a request to upload data including a detailed description of the data
  2. include a sentence describing the data to go in the info button
  3. include a specification of who gets access to the data
  4. request for the category in which the data are to be shown