NASA's Standards Process For Earth Science Data Systems (Invited)
Abstract
NASA’s Standards Process Group (SPG) facilitates the approval of proposed standards that have proven implementation and operational benefit for use in NASA’s Earth science data systems. After some initial experience in approving proposed standards, the SPG has tailored its Standards Process to remove redundant reviews to shorten the review process. We will discuss real examples of the different types of candidate standards that have been proposed and endorsed (i.e. OPeNDAP’s Data Access Protocol, Open Geospatial Consortium’s Web Map Server, the Hierarchical Data Format, Global Change Master Directory’s Directory Interchange Format, NetCDF Classic, CF Metadata). We will discuss real examples of the different types of best practices and implementation experiences that have been documented and endorsed as Technical Notes (i.e. Interoperability between OGC CS/W and WCS Protocols, Lessons Learned Regarding WCS Server Design and Implementation, Mapping HDF5 to DAP2, Creating File Format Guidelines - The Aura Experience, ECHO Metadata) The NASA Earth science community benefits by having a repository of endorsed Earth science data systems standards that have been successfully implemented and used within the NASA environment. NASA’s Earth science data providers can rely on these endorsed standards for demonstrated readiness for mission use and science investigators are assured that standards contribute to science success in their discipline. The SPG is working with NASA’s Decadal Survey Missions (e.g. SMAP, CLARREO, ICESat II and DESDynI) to facilitate the use of NASA’s endorsed standards in these future mission data systems. We have also observed that the Standards process itself can encourage the development consensus within a community through the RFC development and review experience. An RFC can grow the use of common practices among related activities, then once the standard is endorsed, other discipline communities can learn from the successful practice and also use it. The adoption of the standard lowers the barriers to entry and use of NASA data by external discipline communities within NASA and outside NASA.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2010
- Bibcode:
- 2010AGUFMIN14A..01U
- Keywords:
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- 1904 INFORMATICS / Community standards;
- 1926 INFORMATICS / Geospatial;
- 1936 INFORMATICS / Interoperability