First prototype of Tabular Data Package for OSeMOSYS-based models

One of the challenges identified in the OSeMOSYS Steering Committee in June 2019 at the Joint Summer School on Modelling Tools for Sustainable Development  in Trieste (Italy) was the difficulty in comparing different implementations of OSeMOSYS. One reason for this is that each implementation requires the input data presented to it in a different format. The team at  recently released a prototype of the example "Simplicity" model  as a Tabular Data Package  together with the otoole  Python package to generate a GNU MathProg datafile form the Data Package. This lightweight data format could provide the much requested data interoperability for the OSeMOSYS community. Storing OSeMOSYS models in Tabular Data Packages  could enable users to very easily switch between current and future implementations of OSeMOSYS, as well as providing a self-documented, portable and self-validated data structure. Tabular Data Packages also have a number of powerful software tools build around them, which allow easy export to databases, hosting online, automated validation and version control. Next steps will include creating a Tabular Data Structure for OSeMOSYS model outputs, adding scripts to automatically post-process different solver outputs and place them in the Data Package, and explore the scalability of this solution with large models such as The Electricity Model Base for Africa (TEMBA) , the Open Source Energy Model Base for the European Union (OSeMBE)  and the South America Model Based on OSeMOSYS (SAMBA) .