KCDC Motivation

The aim of Astroparticle Physics is to investigate the nature of cosmic radiation that manifests itself in many ways. In various Air Shower Experiments all over the world, the cascades of particles, generated in interaction processes between the particles of the cosmic radiation and the atmosphere of the Earth are detected. As the Air Showers consist of a huge number of particles which are spread over a vast area, big detectors are required to measure a number of parameters of these showers. The combined analysis of observations of various components of the cosmic radiation like charged particles, gamma rays and neutrinos, is widely known as “Multi Messenger Astroparticle Physics”. From this presently classified “hot topic” field, we hope to gain new and exciting information to extend our knowledge of the origin and transport of what we understand as cosmic radiation.
To achieve such a challenging aim it is necessary to provide free access to the data of various experiments measuring cosmic radiation by different methods and techniques. This is not only useful for the community of scientists but also to all of the public interested in this topic.
A first step in this direction is to allow the general public use of the data as well as provide the tools to analyse the data measured with the KASCADE / KASCADE-Grande Experiment. This project is called the KASCADE Cosmic Ray Data Centre, “KCDC” .

Within KCDC we integrated in a second step in February 2021 data from another Cosmic Ray Experiment. In a new KCDC DataShop we publish the data from the Maket-Ani Experiment located on Mount Aragats, Armenia.
This publication is intended to indicate the beginning of integrating further data from more experiments into KCDC DataShops.

Our motivation is based on three ideas:

The idea of open data as it is laid down in the “Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities” from 22.10.2003. There we read :
“Our mission of disseminating knowledge is only half complete if the information is not made widely and readily available to society. New possibilities of knowledge dissemination not only through the classical form but also and increasingly through the open access paradigm via the Internet have to be supported. We define open access as a comprehensive source of human knowledge and cultural heritage that has been approved by the scientific community.”
and

“In order to realize the vision of a global and accessible representation of knowledge, the future Web has to be sustainable, interactive, and transparent. Content and software tools must be openly accessible and compatible.”
The Helmholtz Alliance and the KIT call for further use and for re-examination of the measured data based on this declaration.

Furthermore, KASCADE was financed by taxpayer’s money which implies that the collected data are public property. We want to prepare our data in a way that the general public will be able to access and use the data.

The data have to be preserved for future generations in a way that they should not only be able to re-perform all analysis steps and conclusions which led us to our widely approved results manifested in a lot of international publications, but also to be able to use the data far beyond the lifetime of the experiment which has in fact already been shut down at end of 2012.

This approach is new in Astroparticle Physics as well as in the neighbouring fields like Astroparticla Physics and High Energy Physics, but well known in Astronomy. Therefore, it is our aim to provide a consistent ‘bundle’ of hard- and software applicable for cosmic ray data. KCDC will handle questions like calibration of the raw data, applied quality cuts, data formats but also internet access via a web portal and the associated questions like legal rights and so on from the very beginning.
Because of the huge amount of available data it is not feasible to offer all data in a ‘tarball’ for download. Moreover, we offer a way to apply reasonable selection cuts to reduce the variety of data and parameters adapted to the requirements of the analysis the user intends to perform.

We try to achieve this by means of a flexible WEB portal providing a modern software solution for publishing the KASCADE / KASCADE-Grande data for a general audience based on open source software. KCDC as a WEB portal offers software as a service without installation by the user with the advantage of a world wide access via web browsers to data and processing facilities. We also supply meta information on the detectors and the available data.

Moreover we provide example analysis to encourage teachers and pupils to use our data for their first step into the exciting field of cosmic radiation and Astroparticle Physics.

The third step we will be to release our software as Open Source for free use by other experiments to publish their data in a similar way.

The KCDC Team