In the field of earth system sciences, time series data from sensor systems is crucial for understanding environmental processes, recognizing changes and evaluating models. Not only is data collection important, but also the management of the associated sensor metadata for its usability and interpretability.

The Helmholtz Centers UFZ, GFZ, FZJ and KIT are therefore jointly developing the Sensor Management System (SMS), an open source platform for FAIR and consistent sensor metadata management. The SMS supports the harmonized management of sensors, measurement setups and campaigns, offers a modern user interface, JSON:API interfaces, the OGC SensorML standard as well as OAuth authentication via Helmholtz AAI and a rights management system. Sensor attributes follow a uniform metadata catalog, and the system enables traceability and persistent identifiers.

The SMS is part of the DataHub, which provides a uniform research data infrastructure across the Helmholtz centers in the research field "Earth and Environment". It is already in use at GFZ, UFZ, FZJ and KIT, with comprehensive documentation and a WIKI for users.

The instance at KIT can be found here: https: //sms.atmohub.kit.edu/