A metadata-driven management system for numerical modeling

Research in hydroinformatics extensively studies approaches on reducing the complexity of modeling processes. Input data, the CFD-processing and visualization of results are combined in various ways into so-called integrated modeling frameworks or management systems. Community Modeling Systems (CMS) provide users with a concentrated view on data handling and coupling resources and models, in particular. Unfortunately, most web-based hydroinformatics environments lack consistent, standardized documentation of the modeling process. A reusability or reproducibility outside a CMS is only given for single elements like standardized webservices or metadata descriptions for datasets. Using elements of Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDIs), we propose a concept for a metadata-driven architecture for Computational Fluid Dynamics simulations and to integrate model descriptions into SDIs. We illustrate the abilities of such a metadata-based system with two use cases an extensive outlook.