ESO Developing and Emerging Standards, Practices, & Technologies

NASA’s ESDIS (Earth Science Data and Information Systems) Standards Office’s current Standards Process[1] requires complete documentation of a candidate standard as well as examples of implementations before it is reviewed for approval as a NASA Earth Science Data Systems standard.

But what happens when NASA wants to evaluate and support a developing or emerging standard?   Quite often the documentation is not yet complete and experience with implementations can be very limited.  Instead of waiting for the developing standard to “firm up” or for multiple implementations to be developed over time (and this can be a lengthy time period), sometimes NASA’s ESDIS project has an interest in speeding up this process.  Timely evaluations of a developing standard would have a beneficial impact on its development both in terms of technical excellence and also to speed up the “firming up”. 

There are developing technologies and data management best practices that would be of enormous benefit to the Earth science community if these were reviewed and vetted in some way and then made more visible to the broader community.

In this session, we will look at several examples of developing standards and technologies, hear technical presentations for each, and then discuss the ESO end goal for each – whether a community standard, or best practice, or technical information note is anticipated.

The ESO is investigating potential candidate specifications and standards for geospatial vector formats that can be used to represent data products generated by science teams and DAACs. We will provide an overview of some formats, including those discussed by the ESDSWG Geospatial WG in the past, and will lead an audience discussion on potential candidates. Audience members will be invited to provide brief descriptions of their use of vector data and formats.  

Presentations

1. CF Version 2 - Ethan Davis
2. ESIP OpenSearch Best Practice, CEOS OpenSearch Best Practice, and Developer’s Guide – Doug Newman
3. Data Recipies - Tammy Beaty / Suresh Santhana Vannan
4. Cloud Computing Recommendations – Brian Wilson
5. Guidelines for Provenance – Hook Hua
6. Geospatial vector formats for Earth Science - Allan Doyle