First challenge on Lagrangian Particle Tracking and Data Assimilation: datasets description and planned evolution to an open online benchmark

In the last decade, Lagrangian Particle Tracking (LPT) has emerged as one of the leading measurement techniques for the quantitative determination of fluid flows in three-dimensional domains (see e.g. Schanz et al., 2016), due to its accuracy in reconstructing particles velocities and material accelerations. Due to the scattered nature of the obtained result, at the particles positions only, significant research efforts have also been placed in the development of dedicated Data Assimilation (DA) techniques, aiming at finally reconstructing full 3D velocity and pressure fields on regular Cartesian grids (see, e.g., Schneiders et al. 2016).