A FAIR-driven framework for establishing and sharing virtual observatories based on the OGC standard SensorThings API: enabling replicability and re-imagining science datalife cycle?

Abstract. While numerous solutions exist for publishing time-series data from environmental observatories, the question of how to design and build such an observatory from the ground up remains a largely overlooked challenge. This study pursues two main objectives: 1) to demonstrate how FAIR principles can guide the construction of an environmental observatory in a straightforward and effective manner, and 2) to enable users with no prior knowledge of data standards or databases systems to easily build, explore, and use an observatory-including finding, accessing, downloading, and understanding the data. The same accessibility extends to external users, who must equally be able to understand how the observatory is structured and what scientific objectives it serves. To this end, we develop a framework for the creation and sharing of environmental observatories centred on the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) SensorThings API (STA). This approach is FAIR by design: by placing the STA at the core of the entire data lifecycle, it enables a unified and consistent handling of all stages, from observatory conception, data acquisition to dissemination.