NASA ESDIS Standards Office

NASA's ESDIS Standards Office (ESO) assists NASA's Earth Science Data and Information System (ESDIS) Project in formulating standards policy for NASA Earth Science Data Systems (ESDS), coordinates standards activities within ESDIS, and provides technical expertise and assistance with standards related tasks within NASA's Earth Science Data System Working Groups (ESDSWG). ESO maintains a list of standards approved for use in NASA Earth Science Data Systems, as well as related technical information and useful ESDS references.

ESO is less concerned with de jure standards; rather we are focused on identifying and endorsing practices that work for the NASA Earth Sciences community. Such practices may include standards ratified by a formal standards body; metadata, data formats, and protocols in use within the community; and best practices brought forward by ESDSWG, ESDIS, or others in NASA's Earth science community.

ESO organizes and conducts the public reviews of candidate standards, best practices, controlled keywords, and technical notes. Standards or best practices must be related to Earth observation data systems, and if applicable, must have at least two independent implementations that have been proven to work with NASA Earth science data. ESO recruits identified experts in a technical area to review specific standards and best practices in order to get substantive reviews as well opening the review for public comment.

New missions commissioned by NASA HQ are often required to use the ESO endorsed standards and best practices as a level 1 requirement. ESO endorsed standards and best practices include those associated with metadata models and search protocols to make data Findable; open access protocols to improve data Accessibility; file formats and guidelines for dataset Interoperability; and data quality guidelines to facilitate Reuse.