Author(s): Del-Rosal-Salido Juan, Magaña Pedro, Miguel Ortega Sanchez

Linked Author(s): Miguel Ortega Sánchez

Keywords: See level rise; Climate change; Research Software Engineers; Reproducibility;

Abstract: Currently, academics use research software as part of their everyday work, and this trend should increase in the future. In many cases, this scientific software is developed by the researchers themselves who make them available to the rest of the scientific community. Despite the fact that the relationship between science and software is unquestionably useful, it is not always carried out in a successful manner. Some of the key challenges faced by scientists are the lack of training in software development, the shortage of time and resources or the difficulty in effective cooperation with other colleagues. This could lead to make scientific software slow, non-reusable, invisible, and in the worst case, faulty and unreliable. A multidisciplinary framework that covers both scientific and software engineer demands is needed to handle this situation successfully. Nevertheless, a multidisciplinary team is not necessarily always enough to solve this problem. It is necessary to have some kind of link between scientifics and developers: software engineers with solid scientific background. This approach is being used in the framework of the PROTOCOL project, and more particularly in the development of its applied software tools. In this paper, a tool for the characterization of the climatic agents is presented. The main guidelines in the development process comprise, among others, modularity, distributed control version, unit testing, profiling, inline documentation and the use of best practices and tools.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3850/38WC092019-1402

Year: 2019