Questionnaire on Earth System Science Modeling Systems

We kindly ask you to answer the questionnaire about your experience as model developer and/or user. The results will be used to complete the research work presented in

Rigon, R., Formetta, G., Bancheri, M., Tubini, N., D'Amato, C., David, O., & Massari, C. (2022). HESS Opinions: Participatory Digital Earth Twin Hydrology systems (DARTHs) for everyone: a blueprint for hydrologists. Hydrology and Earth System Sciences Discussions, 1-38.

Please note that the results of the survey will be made public available in aggregated form and completely anonymous. The purpose of this survey is not to classify or judge existing models but only to have an overview of the current status of hydrological models in the spirit of the paper.

For simplicity, in the following "modeling system" is used in a broad sense, meaning that it can be a "system" as well as a model.

Thanks in advance for your time,
Riccardo, Giuseppe, Marialaura, Niccolò, Concetta, Olaf, Christian

Are you*

A modeling system userA modeling system developerBoth

If you are part of a community of model users/developers how big it is?

less than 55-15larger than 15

Which is your modeling system name?*

Select one answer about the modularity of your modeling system*

The code is organized in subroutines (or classes) but it is a bulk of code that manages data, processing and visualization together.The modeling system is organized in models components that are connected together before the execution time with an appropriate scripting.At present, the modeling system is not based on components but it could be easily refactored in components.You are not interested in modularize your modeling system.

Could you kindly explain why you/your community are not interested in modularize your modeling system?

Is the evolution of your modeling system totally in the hand of the original or restrict group of developers? If so, could you kindly explain why?*

Is the development of the modeling system carried out by a community of developers? If so, could you kindly list the rules for the governance of the community?*

How can you contribute to the development of the modelling system?*

Can the modelling system be tested by third parties? If so, how? *

Do you, or your community, use a repository like GitHub? If so, which one? Is it publicly available? *

How do you, or your community, record the setup of the modeling system simulations for reproducibility purposes?

An application programming interface (API) is a connection between computers or between computer programs. It is a type of software interface, offering a service to other pieces of software.

In contrast to a user interface, which connects a computer to a person, an application programming interface connects computers or pieces of software to each other.

One purpose of APIs is to hide the internal details of how a system works, exposing only those parts a programmer will find useful and keeping them consistent even if the internal details later change.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/API

How do you interact with the modeling system?*

By using a software specifically implemented to interact with the modeling system.By using a service API (Application Programming Interface) to perform a machine-to-machine interaction with a given model implementation which runs on a specific server (e.g. it runs for a given model configuration).By using a resource oriented interface (API) which directly access to the model itself and not to a given (fixed) model implementation/configuration).I don't know this detail of the modeling system.Other

Where the modeling system runs?*

The modeling system runs on a specific computer and cannot be moved or executed on a different machine.The modeling system can be moved and executed on a machine that is suitable for a specific use case as a service callable from a client.You have at least a configuration of your system that runs automatically on the cloud using remote remote resources without your specific intervention.Other

Could you kindly explain which technologies do you use?

Modeling system capabilities

The modeling system includes a standard way to estimate error of forecasting.The modeling system allows the user to change its structure to test different modeling solutions.None of the above.Other

Could you kindly explain how the user can modify the modeling solution? The user can chose among pre-defined modeling solutions or she/he is able to easily add her/his modeling solution?

Use of Earth Observations (EO) data*

The modeling system does not use EO data.The model system uses EO data systematically.

Could you kindly explain which EO data do you use?

How do you use EO data? Do you use them to drive the simulations or to calibrate/validate the model?

Methods of modelling

The modeling system uses mainly Ordinary Differential Equations (ODEs).The modeling system uses mainly Partial Differential Equations (PDEs).The modeling system uses both PDEs and ODEs.The modeling system uses classical statistical methods.The modeling system contains tools for machine learning analysis side by side with other modelling paradigms.Other

Please indicate which are the modeling paradigms placed side by side with tools for machine learning.

High Performance Computing (HPC) Facilities*

An infrastructure takes care of parallelization to send the model on the cloud which is transparent to the developer/user.The code is structured for using HPC.The modeling system is not parallelized at all and does not use HPC.The modeling system uses multicores.The modeling system uses multiple CPUs.The modeling system uses GPUs.The modeling system uses distributed computing on the cloud.

About input-output (IO) does your model use standard file format

About input-output (IO) on average which is the size of the IO for the whole model?

less than 1 GB1 - 10 GB10 - 100 GBlarger than 100 GB

About input-output (IO) on average which is the size of the IO for one file ?

less than 1 GB1 - 10 GB10 - 100 GBlarger than 100 GB

Please indicate which is on average the simulation time span and its time step.

About input-output (IO) do you adopt a naming convention for variables?

For pre and post processing data analysis which languages or software do you use?

Do you use techniques of literate computing within your modeling system workflow? Such as Jupyter or Mathematica Notebooks, what else ?

Jupyter NotebooksMathematica NotebooksOther

What are the current modeling system limitations?*

Usability.Flexibility.Scalability.No limitations.

Could you kindly explain in more detail on the limitation of the modeling system and which are the most urgent to fix?

Which strategies do you/your community adopt to improve open science paradigm? For instance do you/your community offer a documentation, tutorials to ease the use of your modeling system to other researcher? Do you/your community organize workshop, courses to present your model?

Other comments or remarks not covered in the previous questions?