Enhancement of Mutual Discovery, Search, and Access of Data for Users of NASA and GEOSS-Cataloged Data Systems

Abstract:

An ongoing NASA-funded project has removed a longstanding barrier to accessing NASA data (i.e., accessing archived time-step array data as point-time series) for selected variables of the North American and Global Land Data Assimilation Systems (NLDAS and GLDAS, respectively) and other EOSDIS (Earth Observing System Data Information System) data sets. These time series (“data rods”) are pre-generated or generated on-the-fly (OTF), leveraging the NASA Simple Subset Wizard (SSW), a gateway to NASA data centers. Data rods Web services are accessible through the CUAHSI Hydrologic Information System (HIS) and the Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Center (GES DISC) but are not easily discoverable by users of other non-NASA data systems.

The Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS) is a logical mechanism for providing access to the data rods, both pre-generated and OTF. There is an ongoing series of multi-organizational GEOSS Architecture Implementation Pilots, now in Phase-7 (AIP-7) and with a strong water sub-theme, that is aimed at the GEOSS Water Strategic Target “to produce [by 2015] comprehensive sets of data and information products to support decision-making for efficient management of the world's water resources, based on coordinated, sustained observations of the water cycle on multiple scales.” The aim of this “GEOSS Water Services” project is to develop a distributed, global registry of water data, map, and modeling services catalogued using the standards and procedures of the Open Geospatial Consortium and the World Meteorological Organization. This project has already demonstrated that the GEOSS infrastructure can be leveraged to help provide access to time series of model grid information (e.g., NLDAS, GLDAS) or grids of information over a geographical domain for a particular time interval.

A new NASA-funded project was begun, to expand on these early efforts to enhance the discovery, search, and access of NASA data by non-NASA users, comprising the following key aspects:

1. Leverage SSW API and EOS Clearing House (ECHO)

2. Register data rods services in GEOSS

3. Develop Web Feature Services (WFS) for data rods

4. Enhance metadata in WFS

5. Make non-NASA data visible to NASA users by leveraging SSW

6. Develop hydrological use cases to guide project deployment and serve as metrics