NFDI4Ing - ORKG, Energy Systems and Data Management

A central resource in energy systems research are so called scenarios – possible development paths for energy supply based on assumptions about technology options and their implications. Scenarios provide a framework for exploring future energy perspectives. So far, these scenarios are documented in human-readable articles.

NFDI4ing is the German national infrastructure for research data in engineering sciences. In their task area “Ellen”, they used the ORKG to put the data from these publications into context with energy system model software to pool information on how gaps in datasets can be compensated for by model calculations. Therefore, the consortium developed templates to describe the goal of the scenarios as well as the assumed installed capacities for different energy sources.

This approach can now be adapted and refined by other energy systems researchers to suit their specific needs and bridge the gap between data and software. The Observatory run by NFDI4ing serves as a central knowledge hub for all related curated papers, contributions, comparisons and visualizations.

But the journey didn’t stop there: Since all data in the ORKG can be freely accessed via various endpoints, it can be used in various projects, even interdisciplinary. In 2023, the data of the Energy Systems Observatory was used to evaluate a question answering approach for scholarly knowledge.