Zach Nowacek ‘27, Maria Esteva, Bernard Chang, Maša Prodanović

WUJUR (2026) | Cite this work

Abstract

The Digital Porous Media Portal (DPMP) is a repository of 176 datasets and terabytes of data. The applications of its data are scattered across a number of disciplines and areas of ongoing research including but not limited to geothermal engineering and aquifer mapping. Operators of the DPMP intend to make datasets easily accessible and searchable to facilitate data reuse. But understanding to what extent the DPMP is accessible requires knowledge of the metadata not initially available. This paper outlines the development of three metadata curation tools for the DPMP. The first of these replicates a tool used by other repositories to simply assess whether and which metadata fields are filled by each dataset. Recognizing the lack of nuance provided by this tool, another curation tool, backed by a Large Language Model, was created to grade and provide feedback on the content of dataset descriptions instead of merely availability. Having assessed metadata quality, the final tool—an AI chatbot (Rocco) backed by a graph database—was constructed to provide users with the ability to search the repository using natural language queries.

Main

This article is viewable by PDF download.

References

References for this work are viewable by PDF download.

Supplemental material

There is no supplemental material provided by the author(s) for this work.

About this article

Citation (APA)

Nowacek, Z., Esteva, M., Chang, B., & Prodanović, M. (2026). Filling the Holes in Porous Media: Metadata Assessment and Accessibility in the Digital Porous Media Portal. WUJUR, 2(2), 33-39.

A DOI link will soon be supplied for this article and added to the above citation.

Author Information

Zach, Nowacek. Washington University in St. Louis.
Corresponding Author. Send correspondence to n.zachary@wustl.edu.

Esteva, Maria, PhD. Texas Advanced Computing Center, The University of Texas at Austin.

Chang, Bernard. Postdoctoral Fellow. The University of Texas at Austin.

Prodanović, Maša, PhD. Frank W. Jessen Professor of Petroleum Engineering, The University of Texas at Austin.

Additional Information and Declarations

There is no additional information or declarations provided by the author(s).

Peer Review

WUJUR thanks the anonymous Peer Reviewers who contributed to the review of this work.

Rights and Permissions

Individual articles © 2026 by their respective authors. Illustrations and images remain the property of their respective authors or rights holders and are reproduced here with permission or under fair use.

The author(s) may grant certain license permissions to the public.

Copyright © 2026. Washington University Journal of Undergraduate Research. All rights reserved for compilation, design, and editorial content.