Sep 9, 2025

Carto-Lab Docker Levels Up: A New Home at IOER FDZ, v1.0.0 Release, and CoRDI Showcase

Carto-Lab Docker Logo

It’s been a while since my last major update on Carto-Lab Docker. The project has taken a significant step forward. What started as a personal workbench for my research has now matured into a stable, officially supported piece of research infrastructure. I’m excited to share three key developments: a new institutional home, the official 1.0.0 release, and our recent participation at the CoRDI conference.

A New Home: Carto-Lab Docker is now an IOER FDZ Project

The biggest news is that Carto-Lab Docker has officially “moved house.” It is now hosted and maintained by the IOER Research Data Centre (IOER FDZ). This move is crucial for its long-term sustainability and signals a commitment to providing a reliable RDM tool for the spatial science community.

This comes with a few practical changes:

  • New Documentation URL: The official documentation now lives at https://cartolab.fdz.ioer.info/. The old domain will redirect, but please update your bookmarks!
  • New Public Container Registry: All official images are now hosted on Quay.io. This makes them more accessible to the broader community. Pulling the latest version is as simple as:
docker pull quay.io/ioer-fdz/carto-lab-docker:latest

v1.0.0 release and a major documentation overhaul

To mark this new chapter, I’ve tagged the 1.0.0 release on Github. This reflects the new level of stability, the clear governance under the IOER FDZ, and a complete overhaul of the documentation.

The docs are no longer just a reference but a comprehensive guide. I’ve added several new sections to explain not just the how, but also the why:

  • RDM Concept: Explains the three-pillar philosophy behind the project: Guaranteed Reproducibility, Enhanced Collaboration, and Integrated Publication.
  • Managing Environments: A deep dive into the four methods for customizing the environment, from simple in-notebook installs to fully reproducible custom Dockerfiles.

Showcase at the CoRDI 2025 Conference

This month, we had the fantastic opportunity to present Carto-Lab Docker at the 2nd Conference on Research Data Infrastructure (CoRDI) in Aachen. We contributed a poster showcasing CLD as a practical example of “RDM in Action” for the spatial sciences. It was a great chance to get feedback from RDM experts and to discuss shared challenges, like the need for a national container registry and strategies for long-term artifact archival.

The poster has been archived on Zenodo and is available for viewing:

CITATION: Dunkel, A., Burghardt, D., Löchner, M., & Nieswand, M. (2025). IOER Carto-Lab Docker An RDM Infrastructure for Transparent, Open, and Reproducible Spatial Data Science (v1.0.0). 2nd Conference on Research Data Infrastructure 2025 (CoRDI), RWTH Aachen University. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17083789

It feels great to see the project evolve. The goal remains the same: to lower the technical barriers for researchers and enable more transparent, open, and reproducible science. With the support of the IOER FDZ, Carto-Lab Docker is now in a much stronger position to achieve that. Check out the new resources and let me know what you think!

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