The Evolution of Seismological Data Standards and What the Changes Mean for Users
Abstract
Adopted by the International Federation of Digital Seismograph Networks (FDSN) in 1987, the SEED standard has long served as the preferred archive and exchange format for passive source seismic (and other) data. Over the years the standard has evolved incrementally, with a major inflection in 1991-1992 that allowed a single volume to be handled as separate data and metadata components. More recently, needs, such as delivery through web technologies, enhanced data identification, and increased flexibility have emerged that are driving the evolution of the SEED standard.
In 2013 the FDSN adopted StationXML as a standard to replace the SEED metadata headers. In 2019, a small number of changes were adopted to address some issues identified in the initial release. XML is an encoding that is native to the web and modern computing and leverages an enormous variety of existing software components. Furthermore, the StationXML format contains a number of significant enhancements over SEED headers. Tools have been created and adapted to ease the transition of the research community from SEED to StationXML. In 2016 IRIS initiated a discussion on the need for a next generation time series format and in 2018 the FDSN released requirements for such a format. The IRIS Data Management Center (DMC) has led a development process to define a candidate format, which is nearing the proposal stage of adoption. This new format contains many enhancements and increased flexibility for data producers and centers. The aim is to update the relevant software components and tools to read the new and old formats seamlessly. In this way, we do not anticipate that the format change itself will represent a problem for most data users beyond getting the latest release of IRIS tools. In conjunction with a new time series format, the FDSN requirements identify the need for a single-string, URN-based identifier for a data source. To meet this requirement, while retaining valuable community recognition, a scheme has been created that combines the traditional network, station, location, and channel codes. Importantly, this scheme allows expansion of all channel codes. While the traditional codes will continue to be used, in either URL or separate form, the eventual use of expanded codes represent a highly-visible change to data users. We will present an overview of these changes, an assessment of impact on the research community, and the resources being made available by the IRIS DMC to facilitate the transition.- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2019
- Bibcode:
- 2019AGUFM.S21H0632T
- Keywords:
-
- 7299 General or miscellaneous;
- SEISMOLOGY