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Guidelines for joining ORFEUS EIDA becoming an EIDA node

Last revision January 2024

To be considered as an EIDA node, an institution must fulfill all of the following requirements:

1. General Requirements

An EIDA node should:

  • be an institution/agency from a country that hosts at least one Core Participant of ORFEUS.
  • be committed to an ORFEUS / EPOS open data policy.
  • ideally represent the seismological community at national level or beyond. In practice this means they should serve as a data repository for other seismic networks in the region.
  • commit human resources to contribute to the maintenance and development of the system and associated software.
  • commit to active participation in the EIDA Management Board and the EIDA Technical Committee. Note: the additional workload to run an EIDA node as compared to an independent data center is by most nodes evaluated to approximately 0.3 FTE.
  • meet a minimum technical level as defined in the Technical Requirements below for an EIDA Node. This includes requirements on both data quality (waveform and metadata) and service (server uptime, reaction time for problems, data security, e.g. redundancy, backups).
  • contribute at least 50 permanent operational stations, with back archive and minimal delay, not previously distributed by other EIDA nodes and maintain a permanent data management center.
  • meet requirements set by EPOS. At present, this means ensuring all owners of the networks distributed from the node 1) provide a formal agreement for data distribution (following EIDA templates), 2) agree to attach an open data license to the data, 3) have a DOI for each network code, and 4) declare all datacenter services at the FDSN.
Any prospective nodes that cannot meet all these requirements are encouraged to inform the EMB Chair. Depending on the difficulty encountered, the EIDA Management Board and ETC will help the applicant to meet the criteria or, if no solution is found, inform the ORFEUS Execom.

2. Technical Requirements

All EIDA nodes must offer access to:

And submit:

Over time, service versions evolve, and the scope of services expands, necessitating EIDA nodes to commit to regular service updates and integration of new services in a timely manner coordinated by the EIDA Management Board.

An EIDA node must dedicate resources and make an effort to provide:

  • High data quality for archives including:
    - Waveforms (miniSEED format)
    - Station Inventory (StationXML)
  • Service availability: >95%
  • Contact person for technical issues and maintenance.
  • Reaction time for problems within 48 hours.
  • At least one backup copy of all data ready for immediate use as needed.
  • The FDSN-Station service must be capable of serving the full inventory at “response” level of each hosted network in one single request.
Note: specifications for ideal operational hardware and expected performance is dynamic and can be discussed with ETC.

Roadmap for becoming an EIDA Node

A. Preparation

Any institution/agency interested in becoming an EIDA node should be technically prepared:

  • All waveform datasets are in miniSEED and organized in a manner already accessible to EIDA software, e.g. SDS structure; if not, there must be a willingness to create an interface to access the data.
  • All datasets have metadata in StationXML, SeisComp Inventory XML or dataless SEED format.
  • Discuss intention to join EIDA with EIDA EMB. Current contact point is the EMB Chair (see the EIDA Management & Structure page). The EIDA EMB brings the discussion to the attention of ORFEUS.
  • The EMB Chair sends a message to the applicant with specific recommendations for the application.

B. Formal Steps

From this stage, Technical and Management steps can proceed in parallel:

Technical
  • Interaction with EIDA Technical Committee in order to prepare the technical integration with the EIDA system, including the implementation all EIDA Technical requirements as described above.
  • EIDA Technical Committee prepares a technical readiness report.
Management
  • A formal written application is submitted.
  • EMB will evaluate the request based on the fulfillment of the above requirements.
  • EMB will make a formal recommendation and inform the ORFEUS ExeCom.
  • The ORFEUS Board of Directors (BoD) decides on the inclusion of the node, based on the EMB recommendation, input from the Execom, and any other consideration the BoD.

C. Final Steps

  • Technical readiness is monitored for a few weeks
  • Operational integration of the data center
  • The Institution hosting the new primary node must sign the EIDA MoU with ORFEUS (latest version approved by the ORFEUS BoD in February 2022: https://polybox.ethz.ch/index.php/s/8vxeQm6nNMT9tK1). https://polybox.ethz.ch/index.php/s/8vxeQm6nNMT9tK1)