Report on Community Conversation #2: enhancing discoverability & access to methods

This report presents key findings from the second in a series of online Community Conversations focused on Enhancing Discoverability & Access to Methods, as part of the National Capability for UK Challenges (NC-UK) programme. The programme delivers integrated monitoring, modelling and data for the UK environment to tackle complex environmental challenges. The event introduced the Environmental Data Science Toolbox, designed to enhance reusable methods that are easier to discover, apply, and share, and gathered feedback on various aspects of the Toolbox, including its design, metadata and method content. The event drew strong interest, bringing together 55 participants from across academia, government, and industry, including 17 participants from UKCEH. The discussion highlighted the potential for the Toolbox to evolve into a trusted hub for environmental data science methods. Through participatory feedback, recommendations include enriching metadata for better discoverability, ensuring methods are intuitive and well-documented, providing examples to support adoption, and enabling access across repositories, hubs, and disciplines.