Modelling tools

The model platform is built around the SENTINEL archive datapackage format. It is based on the frictionless datapackage specification, with some added conventions designed for the energy system modelling community. The toolbox is a collection of software tools that makes working with datasets and models more convenient, and in the process making it simpler to share your work with other researchers.

While the specification and conventions are implementation agnostic, most of the software tools are implemented in the Python programming language. Since the specification and conventions are open and well documented, anyone can build their own software tools to inter-operate with the format.

Features

The most basic functionality is reading and writing datasets (and models). As long as the data is tabular, the toolbox provides a command line as well as a Python API to read, write, and manipulate tabular datasets. Besides the standard forms, the API also supports common variations of typical datasets.

The toolbox also provides an API for validation. Validation can be broadly categorised into two types:

  • verifying the structure of the datasets like column types, or formats, and
  • if there are constraints on the datasets, that can also be verified.

In the future, the toolbox will also provide an API that can be used to inspect and explore a dataset/model using visualisations.

Documentation for the current version of the software tools can be found here.